In his interview feature, we get to know the most radicalist up and coming stars on the planet.

This time we caught up with London's very own camouflaged Krautrockers Snapped Ankles.

Emerging from the sparse wooded areas of East London, Snapped Ankles have been thrilling audiences all over the place with their highly-conceptualised brand of motorik, electro-rock.

Experiencing a vast increase in popularity with the arrival of their incredible debut album Come Play The Trees back in 2017, the masked collective continued their upwards trajectory with a shed load of equally-brilliant live shows, which feature everything from horned head-pieces to leafy costumes, home-made log instruments, and even the occasional laser-shooting wooden staff.

Having released their second album Stunning Luxury via their fittingly-titled home The Leaf Label earlier this year, the band received a further wave of online praise as well as winning the support of 6 Music and Mark Riley, for whom they delivered an electrifying live session for.

With all of this in mind, we figured it was high time we found out more about the band behind the masks.

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TMR: We've been hooked on Snapped Ankles since we first heard 'Johnny Guitar Calling Gosta Berlin' back in 2017, but there's an interesting 2012 release on Spotify called True Ecology that we weren't previously aware of. Can you tell us more about how you formed and how long you've been playing together?

We sat around playing with band names and considering what it is to be a band for a long while before actually making any music! Our first performances were providing live improv soundtracks to other artists’ short films at DIY art nights. We’d not really discuss or see the films before hand__we’d face the screen with back to the audience and watch the film, starting as slowly and quietly as we could before getting fidgety and hammering out full on grooves. These grooves grew into tracks like True Ecology(shit everywhere) until we had about 30 minutes of music at which point we started to get invited to play at friends squats and warehouse parties. This incubation period for the band took a while but we really emerged as a group in 2011.



TMR: As a band who's debut album was called Come Play The Trees, the Leaf Label would appear to be the perfect home for you. What has it been like working with them and was there anything besides the name that reeled you in?

Well of course the natural serendipity of the first albums’ concept and label was too good to turn down. As well as their well respected eclectic taste, Leaf are experts at launching bands that defy easy categorisation, so we were very keen to work with them.

TMR: A lot of your tunes have the potential to spiral off into endless jams. Is this often how you start working on new material?

We have a variety of ways to create new music. there is the classic improvising as group which requires hours of sifting thro recordings to find the good bits that can be developed. However we’ve found that by creating diy musical installations (log synths etc) and then the band performing them as part of short presentations at our own London Topophobia night _we can discover ideas and tunes that otherwise would not have been so obvious..our favourite experimental set up is Log ringing - we stand in a circle like church bell ringing, each with a single oscillator log synth and then we beat out proto techno rhythms that become the basis for a track... for example.

TMR: We've been thoroughly enjoying your new album Stunning Luxury since its arrival back in March. Can you tell us more about the recording process and did it differ at all from Come Play The Trees?

Stunning luxury is a companion collection to Come play the tress in many ways. The recording was done in same woods as before and with Danaloge from Comets is coming/Soccer 96 on production and mixing duties - they only difference being that SL took 6months rather than 6 years that CPTT to make!

TMR: The overriding themes on Stunning Luxury seem to focus on the disparity between the super-rich and everyone else. Is it important to you to deal with serious subjects as a band or is it just your way of dealing with what's going on?

Stunning luxury grew from playing at lots of closing parties for warehouse spaces and squats as the landlords cashed in on the building bonanza that’s happening  across the country-so we started dressing as estate agents and presented the deeds for the venue, measuring the space and auctioning the lease off to invisible overseas investors.It’s not so much about gentrification or social inequality but more about developers selling the very creativity these venues/communities nurture, that is quashed in their investment brochures and construction projects. Most definitely it’s a catharsis for the group to put it to song!



TMR: Despite your relatively traditional 'rock band' set up (live drums, bass, guitar etc.), your gigs feel more like raves when everyone in the crowd is moving. Do you take a lot of influence from dance and electronic music and if so, which artists have influences you the most?

With our faces hidden,  the audience only have the music to focus on so that helps create a bit more of an intense dancing atmosphere (especially if we can get the lights down and smoke up!!

In our woods we have tried to develop our own path but buried deep in our roots you may unearthed Craig Leon/Brian Eno/Brian Chippendale/Brian Gibson /rising high records/Silver apples/Kruftwerk/youtube rave videos/ Htbx_whitechapel 2016

TMR: Your signature camo get ups look amazing on stage, we'd love to how that idea come about?

First we built log synth instruments in order to make primitive brutal synth music and once we made a few of these we had a mini forest of log synths. We were down to make performance ant London topophobia, a night we co-host and had been researching African carnival dress. We started discovering European pagan green man costumes were in a similar vein to this mascarade and realised these figures that still exist in village festivals today represent the outsider fear of the community, a fear that correlates with the enticing demons that rock and roll itself champions. As a post punk band we therefore envisaged a totally camouflaged group that embraces the invisible whilst celebrating the communal fear of chaos, idiocy and the unknown.

TMR: Do you think you'd ever want to ditch the outfits or are you in it for the long haul now?

We are mutating and making new concepts for our style depending on the situation..the woodwoses become the estate agents, the agents become mechanics in a workshop .. we are always masked though.

TMR: If you could engineer the perfect environment to listen to Snapped Ankles in what would it be?

The environment we play in is so important to our work and we are always looking at ways to reassess the rooms we are in..the resonance of the space or even an object can now be easily worked out and then played with to say highlight a particular frequency or make a room shake at with a certain bass note.

TMR: As a blog specialising in new music, we'd love to to pick your brains about any exciting acts that you've been listening to recently?

DJ. Flugvél og Geimskip / NATALIE SHARP’s BODY VICE / Overmono / Makaya McCraven / Craven Faults / Dry Cleaning / Loraine James/ NKISI…

TMR: And finally, what does the rest of the year look like for Snapped Ankles?

We are planning our biggest headline show at Village underground October 30th with Natalie Sharp and others- it’s called the Vorticity of Sound as we aim to surround the audience with speakers and drummers as if they audience we inside a dance sequencer….it’s going to be wild in the woods!



You can catch Snapped Ankles live at a host of festival slots this summer before they head off on a UK headline tour this October.

You can find a full list of performances here.

-Holly Mullineaux