Wicked City

When people were wondering, in the year 2000, what pop music would sound like in twenty years’ time, Jockstrap are the sort of outfit they might have come up with. The London-based duo of Georgia Ellery and Taylor Skye have been turning heads for a couple of years now, and their chameleonic music has recently seen them snapped up by Warp.

Wicked City, their first EP for the label, cannot be pinned down to a singular style. Within the first minute of opener ‘Robert’ the duo have crammed in a sort of Peaches-does-PC-Music verse, juddering beats reminiscent of clipping. and wilding lo-fi trap that is a sort of mid-point between the two. It’s disorienting and thrilling in equal measure, a vibe Jockstrap ride for the rest of Wicked City’s twenty-odd minutes. In doing so they recall a variety of iconoclastic musical innovators from recent times - Death Grips, Confidence Man and Frank Ocean to name but three.

For all of the shapeshifting in their sound, Jockstrap clearly know their craft well. ‘Acid’, ‘Yellow In Green’ and ‘City Hell’ may surprise with ersatz electronics and strange structural choices, but at their core these are stirring and ornate baroque-pop numbers. When Ellery’s voice soars there is a particular similarity with the modern-day chamber stylings that peppered Dirty Projectors’ Bitte Orca.

Jockstrap’s Wicked City EP announces the London duo as a bold new force in leftfield pop music.