These New Puritans: Momentum
Momentum Music Fund Recipient 2013
These New Puritans were formed in their Thames Estuary homeland by twins Jack and George Barnett and friend Thomas Hein, in the mid 2000s. Jack had been writing songs since the age of seven and recording them since 12 on his older brother’s 4-track; George joined him on drums and the band grew out of this.
The band’s debut album, the manic patchwork of ideas Beat Pyramid and the series of videocasts that preceded it, were hailed by the NME as demonstrating a “span of ideas and singularity of vision that simply shouldn’t happen to 20-year-olds”, while the Observer Music Monthly called it “utterly engrossing and totally essential.”
Hidden (often stylised as ĦỊÄÄỂŅ), a magically bleak album of stark oppositions – natural and man-made, digital and acoustic; elegiac woodwind set against close-up knife sharpening and dance-hall rhythms – was notably critically acclaimed. With its “extraordinary range, originality and clarity of purpose that defy overall comparison with anything else,” (NME) it pulled together a host of unlikely influences to create something personal, unique and unmistakably These New Puritans.
The band dedicated late 2010 and 2011 to recreating the album with a series of shows, Hidden Live, at venues including the Barbican Centre, London, and the Pompidou Centre, Paris, featuring the Britten Sinfonia, a children’s choir, ten-foot taiko drums, duelling vibraphonists and live Foley techniques.
These New Puritans announced they were writing a new album following their last show of 2011 in Mexico City, at which point keyboardist Sophie Sleigh-Johnson left the band. They have remained largely silent since, resurfacing briefly in 2012 to remix Björk’s Mutual Core.
Activity
Funding will be used to help produce an expanded line up show – presenting Field of Reeds, it its entirety as it was recorded as well as music old and new.