Dead Forms: An Odessey of Four Tet, Modern Art and Mash-up Poems In the Search for Art Rock.

Dead Forms, made up of 2 multi-talented musicians, genre-bending producer, vocalist, pianist and artist Alice Mills and James Richardson, producer, song-writer and vocalist for self-described 'Part-Time Yacht Rockers' Shtëpi, are already making waves in the world of British Art Rock despite having only just released their debut single 'Counting Sheep' on streaming platforms.

So I caught up with the duo last week to chat about their love of Modern Art, Mash-Up Poems and all things Art Rock to find out what is making this combination so successful.

Q: First up, the question I'm dying to know, why  the name 'Dead Forms'?

James: Well we were having a pretty difficult time coming up with a name. We went through all sorts of strange and terrible names, all of which we scrapped as soon as we thought of them. 

Alice: Yep, it was pretty bad until I had this idea of going and Googling some modern art online to see if we could find something, and we came across this painting called 'Profumo' by Luigi Russolo and found there was a band already called that and then started thinking about different styles of painting (i.e. forms) and the fact that all the best names for bands were taken (i.e. dead) and came up with Dead Forms. 

Q: So how did the collaboration come about? 

James: Well Alice and I ended up locked-in together during lock-down with a few of my housemates, and because we had load of time on our hands and some sound equipment we just started recording. 

Alice: Yep I came up with some ideas, showed them to James and he was like, 'yep sure lets do it.' We've been meaning to do this for a while, so when the opportunity arose we just went for it. 

Q: You mentioned the first single of the project 'Counting Sheep,' what was the writing process for that? 

James: Well we wrote the lyrics sort of half and half really. What happened on this track and most other tracks on the EP was that I would start of with an idea and then start writing and see where it went. Then when I hit a dead-end Alice would sort of pick it up and finish it off. 

Alice: Yep I just ended up picking it up and adding to things, tinkering around with the concept and adding to it. The problem we have is that the music comes easily but the lyrics don't. So then we started experimenting with mash-up poems, where we would search for random poems or quotes and then use different words from them to spark off ideas. 

So with 'Counting Sheep' we went for the idea of dreaming, which we got from mixing some Instagram poetry with Shakespeare and came up with this idea of dreaming and how that fed into art. The music was inspired by Radiohead and that sort of electronic, woozy, trippy sound they have in their late albums like 'Moon-Shaped Pool'. 

Q: Of course James your usual band is Shtëpi, do you think there's a crossover between Dead Forms and that stuff?

James: The general vibe is different. Of course, we did have the help from friends of ours we were locked in with, like a couple of the guys are sound engineers so we got them to come in to our makeshift recording studio in the front room, have a listen and make suggestions about mixing, recording and various other production stuff. It was a real learning process for us really. It was completely different to normal where we were all separated and had to keep calling each other up if we got an idea and wanted to record. So I mean, undoubtedly there is crossover, but as I say the vibe is completely different.

Q: Finally, and this is a bit of a curve ball,  but if you we going on a round the world trip would you take an instrument, an album or a song?

Alice: Well when you first said that question I wanted to say Violin but then the more I thought about it I finally settled on Piano, just because you can play it any time you want, in any mood and in any style. 

James: Oooh. Erm... that's really tricky, I suppose I'd take Four Tet's new album 'Sixteen Oceans.' Ever since a friend of mine introduced me to his music I've got really into it. 

Dead Form's Track 'Counting Sheep' is out now on Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, Amazon Music, Deezer, Tidal and Pandora here