There’s no room for January blues here on Sounds Sick as a new year brings us a new cohort of acts to get excited about! Any sense of lethargy is blown out the door as Edinburgh-based dance-punk outfit Bikini Body wow us with their punchy riffs, infectious rhythms and sharp-witted lyricism. Demanding your attention with a gripping intensity, Bikini Body bring a chaotic energy that’s sure to get you hooked. With a lot of plans for the year ahead, they’re not a band to be missed- so let’s introduce you.
Formed after a drunken night out, frontwoman Vicky Kavanagh took her poetry from her notes app to a song sheet, and Bikini Body were born. Alongside bassist Kyle Peterson, they recruited Dan O’Gorman (drums) and Josh Booker (guitar) before introducing latecomer Harry Volker (synths/ percussion), who, after having produced the band’s EP, fled the South to Edinburgh to complete the lineup of Scotland’s feistiest in the business.
“We learned from the most recent Spotify wrapped that we’re now Crank Wave,” laughs Harry. “Most of the songs were written before I showed up, so it’s been a case of being like, ‘What’s the little sparkle we can add in?’ We draw heavily from dance and disco music along with I guess a punk ethos or aesthetic - I like to say that we want people to dance, but be angry about it.”
With three singles and an EP already under their belt, the band have found their feet and pinned down their sound. On the recording process, Vicky comments, “I think we’ve put a lot of time and effort into finding the right people to work with and the right place to work. Most recently, we’ve worked with producer Chris McCrory who really wanted to capture the live sound, so they were really encouraging of me to not just be static in the booth, but to have the mic and wander around and go crazy, and to me you can really hear that in the recordings which will come out soon.”
While the passion emanates from the tracks, what can we expect from a Bikini Body live show?- “Lots of energy is the main thing,” answers Vicky, “I’m going crazy, but I also think that the rest of the band are just fizzing when they’re on stage around me which is really cool. For me, there’s a lot of energy and aggression that I let out that I can’t let out in normal life. There’s a lot of confidence and swagger as well. You can really be whoever you want to be up there, and I think the more you do that the more it seems to resonate with people. It’s really funny because I’m actually quite a chill person, you know I’m not really over the top. It’s just a crazy alter ego I guess.”
Rising through the ranks of the Edinburgh music scene, Kyle comments,” I think Edinburgh specifically is a really small scene of bands, so you kind of know everyone, and it’s very open to new bands too. In other cities that I played in with bands before, it was really hard to get gigs initially, especially decent gigs, but here it was like the minute we started, all the small venues were open to us playing… We play a lot in Glasgow too which is a crazy city for music. I think some people probably think that we’re based in Glasgow because we play there so much, but I like both for very different reasons I guess.”
“Coming from the South East originally - everything is competitive because there are just so many people," says Vicky, “I found that super intimidating when I came out of uni. I didn’t know how I was gonna differentiate myself from anybody else - so I moved 500 miles north.”
“I definitely think that if we had all lived in Glasgow instead of Edinburgh it would have been a lot harder to have the same kind of trajectory,” muses Josh, “We just wouldn’t have stood out as much. Edinburgh has been a real supportive environment for us.”
Dan continues, “I think it would have been a lot easier in Glasgow to have been pigeon holed in with other bands who sound like us, whereas in Edinburgh when we first started getting shows, they were much more varied, and the kinds of bands that we’ve played with and been influenced by have been a lot more varied then ending up in a post punk or post punk adjacent bill.”
While the music takes inspiration across different genres, the band themselves seem to differ in their influences, all coming together to make that magic sound. Vicky reflects, “I think the biggest inspiration for me, and the only reason I even considered starting a band, was The Slits. Ari Up basically showed me that you don’t need to be able to sing to convey what you wanna get across,- ideas emotions, whatever - and also you an do a blood curdling scream!”
“I just really love the songwriting in The Slits as well - its kind of what I wanna emulate. It’s cheeky, scampy women getting away with the stuff that men sort of get away with all the time, and I like that a lot. When I come on the stage I want to show people that women can kind of be blokes if you know what I mean- if bloke is a non gendered word for a second - then you know, that’s what I wanna embody.”
“My background before Bikini Body was that I played in metal bands,” explains Dan, “but since then I’ve gotten into bands like Viagra Boys, The Orielles and Parquet Courts who are able to bring that intensity but make it quite dance-y, and actually transitioning from thinking about how complex I can be to thinking about how simple it can be has been one of the big things that’s influenced me since joining the band.”
Kyle continues, “Initially we were really inspired by really rhythmic post punk, and for me a lot of those bands from New York, like Liquid Liquid were huge rhythmically for us and I think LCD Soundsystem for me has always been a big influence in how I’m writing the basslines. Bands that lean into rhythms that feel almost how a more electronic song or DJ set might sound, where you’re just kind of repeating the same rhythm for a while and you just kind of get lost in it. The bassline has to make people dance I guess is the main criteria for me, but then I also like really sad emo music, so I also want people to feel something.”
On the year ahead, Vicky comments, “I think it’s gonna be good. I’d say last year was kind of our nurturing year, we were taking the new music and making it into something nice, and this year we can actually give it to the world and make stuff happen which is exciting. We’ve been gathering our strength."
With details of their new EP to be released in the coming weeks, there’s a lot more Bikini Body coming our way soon. Stay tuned.