Fcukers: Life Of The Party

When Jackson first moved from his hometown of Los Angeles to New York around 2016, he was told: “Don’t move here for music. The industry doesn’t care.” No one was signing bands, or paying attention to New York at all, Jackson claims. He ignored the warnings anyway and formed rock band Spud Cannon; by 2022, they had folded. Now, he was just another 20-something in the city trying to make it, DJing house nights at Pianos for rent – on a Monday, no less.

Shanny felt similarly disillusioned, having left her psychedelic-indie act The Shacks when she bumped into Jackson at a vintage fashion shop. They bonded over their electronic tastes; Shanny was getting into dubstep, being no stranger to the dancefloor. “Growing up in New York, it’s pretty easy to get into trouble young,” she nods. “I was going to clubs at 15 with a fake ID, being at 1 Oak with bottles, which is kind of crazy.”

The duo had no reason to believe things would be any different when they started Fcukers. But this time around, the pandemic had ended, and a swarm of urbanites hungry to dance descended upon New York. Turns out, all Fcukers needed were two tracks – ‘Mothers’ and ‘Devils Cut’, a Paradise Garage-inspired cover of the Beck song ‘Devils Haircut’ – and fans were hooked.

“It was an amazing time, and the scene did naturally coalesce,” Jackson explains. “The beauty of [that period], which doesn’t get talked about a lot, was that everyone was focused on what was happening locally. No one had grand aspirations. It was like: ‘what’s going on in the city?’”

Then, The Dare dropped his debut single ‘Girls’ that same year, singlehandedly kickstarting the indie sleaze revolution that Fcukers suddenly found themselves immersed in. “I remember the day after ‘Girls’ came out, he came [to Pianos] on Monday and said: ‘So I finally made it to one of these damn Pianos parties!’,”Jackson laughs.

Whether they identify as “indie sleaze” or not (spoiler: they don’t), Fcukers were now at the centre of the burgeoning New York scene - a scene which fostered healthy competition, not least when it came to finding unusual rave locations. “Everyone was trying to low-key one-up each other: ‘oh, you did a show in an abandoned subway? Well, I’m going to do a show in an abandoned pool!’”

Continuing to take advantage of the luck that came their way, the pair soon found themselves expanding beyond the NYC underground. A month after their first show, a Japanese girl caught wind and blogged about them; when the band spotted 300 new followers from the country, they took the risk and enquired about a potential show in Japan. “We hit up the girl and said ‘hey, if we come, will you get us a show?’”

Then, when Celine paid for the duo to DJ their party at Paris Fashion Week, they blagged an additional show at London’s famed George Tavern. The rest, as they say, is history: by the end of 2024, Fcukers had released ‘Baggy$$’ and toured five different continents. They found themselves bumping into their friends - The Dare, Frost Children, Chanel Beads - on festival lineups, along with veterans of both scene and city like LCD Soundsystem. The power of the New York wave leaves the band awestruck to this day. “There was no [conversation of] ‘let’s make it to Europe’,” Jackson says. “That’s why it’s so beautiful.”

Previously known as Kenny Beats, the producer has recently experienced an unexpected renaissance, thanks in part to his work with fellow New York upstarts Geese on their runaway success ‘Getting Killed’. Before that, he was more known for his hip-hop work, boasting collaborations with Vince Staples, Rico Nasty and Denzel Curry. So when Blume suggested they hang out in the studio, Fcukers had no idea what to expect. They accepted, assuming they’d ditch the session anyway to attend their label signing party, never to see him again.

“I thought: ‘This is weird, we’ve never worked with big producers’,” Jackson says. “But I remember sitting down at his keyboard for the first time and thinking: ‘Fuck it. You have nothing to lose. You just told your label they’re not getting anything this year – go for it’.”

That same day, they made ‘L.U.C.K.Y’: a glittering house track that perfectly captures the essence of Fcukers. Shanny’s gossamer voice floats over Jackson’s sharp piano stabs, as she utters: “L-U-C-K-Y, I’m lucky / Y-O-U are mine ‘cause I’m lucky”. Sexy, fun, irresistibly simple – that’s the Fcukers charm right there.

“I think he disarmed us and made us comfortable; he’s an East Coast guy,” Jackson muses. “For Shanny and I, there was something very familiar about that.” Meeting with Blume “opened the floodgates”, Shanny adds, and the trio ended up making even more music that night – so much so that, in what must be a first for Fcukers, they abandoned their own party.

Blume could move fast, bottling the lightning energy the band are so good at conjuring live. “Jackson and I would be playing stuff and playing some of the synths he had,” Shanny tells us. “He’d be compiling it as we went and throwing it all together, so it was really easy to work quickly with him.”

But the real beauty of Blume, she reckons, is his no-filler, all-killer approach. “His decision-making in the studio was super helpful because we were getting stuck, spending a long time on something smaller - a sound, for example. He’d just say: ‘Okay, this is not working, move on’. When you trust someone like that and you trust their musical tastes and their opinion, it’s great. He’s such a talented guy.”

By the end of two weeks, Fcukers found themselves sitting on an entirely new album to the one they’d made before. “I made so much new stuff so quickly, and I’m really proud of it and excited to share it,” Shanny beams. 

Given their unexpectedly faithful production, we’re not surprised when Jackson tells us he went to [London university] Goldsmiths for a year abroad during college. In fact, he’s been listening to British gems like The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and Fatboy Slim since he was a child, thanks to his father’s own college tastes. “There was one store that would get one copy of The Face, and he knew the exact day the delivery would come in every month,” Jackson recalls.

Elsewhere, Shanny’s love for Jamaican music influences a more melancholy run of songs. On wobbling dub cut ‘TTYGF’ - which also features the record’s sole collaboration, with Canadian rapper Skiifall - she mourns a cheating lover, seething: “You say you’ll love me ‘til the world ends / Why don’t you tell it to your girlfriend?”

“We like to show a bit of range,” Shanny notes. “All kinds of stuff inspires us. I think it’s cool to have a really chill moment to balance out the hyper-intense, fun party vibes of the rest of the album. It’s also freeing for us creatively; you might get a downtempo song or you might get a club track. It’s really cool to have the freedom to do both and not feel boxed in.” 

“I don’t think it clicked for us how big of a deal it was until the tour got announced,” Jackson adds. “In our head, it was no bigger than Tame Impala, and then when it was announced, our phones were blowing up and we were like… no!” “We could open for every other opener he has,” Shanny says. “So we’re honored to be there and [go] to Brazil.” 

As they graduate to stages beyond their wildest dreams, the pair will also have to face the challenge of balancing their ballooning crowds with the DIY energy that cemented their reputation in the first place. Shanny wants to try and incorporate the grit as much as she can, she affirms, but acknowledges that “you can’t really have a show at an abandoned mall for 5,000 people without it being kind of a train wreck. We always want our fans to be safe and shit, I wouldn’t want it to be too cracked out.”

Instead, Fcukers will carry the memories of their scrappy start through their humility - and make no mistake, they genuinely do seem grateful that they’re here at all. They might not throw parties at abandoned buildings anymore, but the pair are still just happy that people are enjoying the music. As Jackson puts it: “If it touches one person, if it touches 100 people, great - we’ve already gotten way farther than I’d ever thought in a million years.” 

‘Ö’ is out on 27th March via Ninja Tune. 

Tags: Features, In Deep, Fcukers