Vuvuvultures: Finding The Human Element

The music industry has chewed up plenty of bright young things, moulding and re-purposing their initial charm before reserving a place for them on the scrapheap. Independence is something worth fighting for, then, and Vuvuvultures have made sure that they're the ones in control.

The band released their debut record, 'Push/Pull', on July 29, and it sounds exactly as they intended it to. Goth synths crash into thick, distorted guitars and Harmony Boucher's anthemic vocals, while the lyrics conjure images of dystopian landscapes, artificial intelligence and paranoia.

To release the record they formed their own label and retreated into the past, embracing analogue technology at London's famous Lynchmob Studios under the guidance of engineer Max Heyes. They were chasing the human element in their music, and bassist Nicole Bettencourt Coelho believes that they found it.

“Musically, a big part of it was that we wanted to be super analogue,” she said. “A lot of our writing process is quite 'in the box', we do a lot of stuff with digital effects and things and we wanted to recreate all that with actual analogue gear. We recorded on an old '70s console and we had tape machines, tape loops. It was all about fusing that electronic heart that we have with the live sound and making it one thing. We just wanted to do something really honest and not have people telling us how to present ourselves and write our music. This is who we are and how we want to sound.”

Vuvuvultures' DIY streak is nothing new. Prior to pressing play on their own label, they had already set up an events company to ensure that their shows were representative of their aesthetic and attended by like-minded people. Gigs were staged in churches and abandoned factories, in front of 'a team of misfits'.

“From day one, we knew how we wanted to go about it and what we wanted to do,” Bettencourt Coelho said. “The first gig we ever played was at our own event, and that's actually why we started up our own events thing. There didn't seem to be any other gig in London that it made sense for us to play. Everyone was like, 'come play this shitty bar for free with bands that are completely different to your sound'. We just wanted to do something where the whole night was cohesive, and there were bands that we liked that other people who liked us might also like.”

The battle between human and machine is a recurring theme for Vuvuvultures. In a live setting, as on record, they rail against electronic music's reliance on laptops and backing tracks, fusing influences from Nine Inch Nails, metal, indie and pop into one monstrous whole. They even went as far as to modify their gear themselves, giving names to their sampler, drum machine and keyboards.

“Something we felt really strongly about was having a human element in everything,” Bettencourt Coelho said. “We used to play with a backing track, but we moved away from that because we started to feel like we were playing to a machine, to pre-recorded sounds.”

Despite their attention to detail and commitment to their independence, Vuvuvultures aren't pushy, over-protective parents though. Once the record is on your turntable, CD player or iPod, it's yours to experience and interpret as you see fit.

“We want people to interpret our music in their own way,” Bettencourt Coelho concluded. “It's like when you're reading a book and you're creating the story in your head as you go along. It's like giving people some media to experience and expand on, we're not trying to put anything in there, just write music that we like.”

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