BOB VYLAN: WE LIVE HERE
Bob Vylan take their forceful brand of grime-punk on the tour that screams seminal, writes Joe Bill
All images - Derek Bremner
With stories of wild live shows and members of the industry telling them their music was “too extreme”, ‘grime-punk’ purveyors Bob Vylan have already set about stamping their boots all over a genre that needed a bit of a kicking.
The two-piece comprising Bob and Bobby set off on tour for the first time in two years this summer with an early stop at The Forum in Tunbridge Wells to give audiences a reason to get angry and sweaty while delivering a bagful of ugly home truths.
While we first discovered Bobby Vylan through their One More Day Won’t Hurt collaboration with west Kent punks Slaves, it has been the release of their debut album We Live Here and its subsequent tour that has really brought the duo the attention their craft deserves.
Akin in anger to the likes of Idles and Sleaford Mods, but unique in delivery, the easiest if not laziest way to pigeonhole them is as ‘post punk’. That’s not a phrase that any who are labelled by it seem to like, but you get the idea.
“Neighbors called me n***** / Told me to go back to my own country / Said since we arrived this place has got so ugly / But this is my fucking country / And it’s never been fucking lovely.”
Incendiary lyrics that will enrage some, resonate with others and force still more into denial, flood tracks like Lynch Your Leaders and Northern Line, while police brutality forms the centre theme of track Pulled Pork. There’s even a minute-long vacuum of music on Moment Of Silence that delivers a highly flammable statement about Royal affairs as a chaser shot.
It becomes pretty clear, pretty quickly that Bob Vylan have something to say, and you best listen. So, we did...
ON THEIR LIVE PERFORMANCE SET-UP BEING JUST A DRUMMER, A VOCALIST AND BACKING MUSIC...
Bobby - Slaves were a big influence in displaying what you are able to accomplish with two people in a band.
The idea that you don’t need the guitar, bass, synths and all that on stage more comes from that rap and grime, where you can just have a DJ and an MC, and that’s all that’s needed for a performance. There isn’t any need to recreate a whole track with a live band.
As long as the rapper is healthy enough to catch every word and every bar, no one goes there asking ‘Where’s the live band at?’.
ON THE TERM ‘GRIME-PUNK’...
Bobby - It’s terrible innit. It sounds so stupid. But, at the same time, we understand it. If you don’t know what we do, and I’m not sure there’s been enough reference for it to be able to explain it, it is grime-infused punk music.. so that is what it is, really.
It’s really about the delivery. Because if you listen to a lot of punk music, there’s not bars to it as such. There’s not loads of clever wordplay and double entendres, there’s no swag to it. It’s more… [rhythmic shouting]. But the Slaves remix, it’s a grime-punk thing like “one more wrap/ one more beer/ knock that back then bang that gear/ talkin’ ’ bout you’re the man round here…”, do you know what I mean? There’s a flow to it and a cadence to it that you don’t find in a lot of punk music. So that’s where that description comes from.
ON RELEASING AN ALBUM THAT WASN'T INITIALLY STREAMED ON SPOTIFY, AND THEN TOURING IT LIKE THE ‘GOOD OLD DAYS’...
Bobby - Getting out and playing live is something we’ve been waiting for since the first lockdown. It’s interesting that you’ve thought about it in that way because that wasn’t the idea when we were releasing the album.
The subsequent acts that have taken place, releasing it physically and that you couldn’t stream it... and now there’s a tour… it does seem like an old way of doing things, well, until enough time has passed... and this way becomes new again.
ON REINVENTING THE WHEEL WHEN IT COMES TO RELEASING...
Bobby - Now everybody releases singles, singles, singles and then the album comes out and it’s all the singles that you’ve heard… we just see that so much.
I think it’s cool to put time and effort into a body of work, offer a couple of singles and digest it properly. I feel like that’s easier to do when it’s not on streaming platforms. When you pay for something, you want your money’s worth and you’re going to take time to listen to it.
It’s a shame when new albums come out and they are only appreciated for a week. There is more new music being released now than ever before. It would be cool to see it come back into the culture of music, to take some time and enjoy it.
ON SPREADING THE WORD OF THE WE LIVE HERE ALBUM...
Bobby - I think what it did was tap into a certain type of person that appreciates music and wants to live with music... And it spread because of that, with people saying ‘Yo, you have to listen to this album’, and the only way they could get it was on vinyl or the [paid] download. It sparked something in people. Maybe if they just streamed it, they wouldn’t have felt so enthusiastic about telling people.
The thing with that is, you can guarantee that they are active listeners because it’s not on some radio or playlist. Having 10 active listeners is way better than 1,000 people where it’s on in the background.
Bob - Even though it’s less accessible, because you’ve got to buy it, you know the people that do buy it wanna hear it. It helps us carve out who the audience is. You might have all these people listening in all these places on Spotify, but it doesn’t really mean anything because they might not come to a show.
Bobby - That’s the reality of it, there’s people that we know whose listener count is up but they can’t sell a ticket.
ON WHETHER THERE WAS A LIMIT OR HIGH BAR FOR THE LYRICS AND WHETHER THERE HAS BEEN ANY BACKLASH...
Bobby - There’s no bar. That’s how you do it. If you take the ceiling off, you can go where you want.
[Backlash?] There’s been nothing serious so far... unless we’re on a list we don’t know about, which we probably all are to some degree. If we operated within certain structures that other artists have to operate in, I’m sure we probably would have [had a backlash].
The reason we released the album the way we did was because we were having trouble getting out because of some of the statements on certain tracks.
If we were part of that machine, then someone would have said ‘You can’t say that!’.
ON THE LYRICS ABOUT THE QUEEN ON ENGLAND’S ENDING…
Bobby - I don’t really see that as shocking. It’s not really that outspoken. It’s just saying a thing innit. Personally, I think it would take a lot to shock me in music. Because after the shock rock of the noughties – I know he’s a bit of a scumbag – but Marilyn Manson, that sort of stuff then was pretty ‘Whoa!’. And at that time Eminem and the stuff he was saying, and then Tyler, the Creator came along… there’s nothing left to say. So I don’t know how you could really find yourself shocked.
ON PUNK MUSIC…
Bobby - In rap they’ve been shocking people. In punk, yes, but there has been a big lull between the Sex Pistols and now. And now punk music has become part of that machine and it’s very tame, even though it tries to appear not to be. It tries to be outspoken, but it’s very ‘I’ve heard this before’... so maybe those statements on England’s Ending do seem quite shocking.
ON THE RACIAL ISSUES EXPLORED WITHIN THE ALBUM…
Bobby - It’s us. It’s how we grew up.
Bob - It’s what life is, every day. It’s what we live with. It’s what we talk to each other about and our friends and family. Rather than it being actively thought of as the centrepiece of the music, it’s just a personal point of view of a black man in England.
Bobby - It was never a conscious decision to make music that speaks about race. We didn’t set out to be a ‘political’ band. But you can’t really help it. If you’re aware of these things, it’s hard not to express it in some way. It’s not contrived.
ON WHETHER OR NOT THINGS ARE CHANGING FOR THE BETTER…
Bob - I think there is definitely change, but I think people need to be realistic about how this all works. What we all are striving towards is not something that’s going to come easily or probably coming any time soon. The world that we all want is probably never coming in our lifetimes, but inch by inch we will get there. All this [the George Floyd case] has made it part of public conversation. Now it’s out there and there’s people talking about it, we can start to find ways to work through things. Things are changing, but people better keep their heads out of the clouds… there’s much, much more we’ve got to do.
INSTA: @bobbyvylan WEB: bobvylan.com/
