Interview Chalk: “We’re beginning to find comfort in realism and more personal subjects”
Leading the charge for a new wave of dance-punk with a storming trilogy of early EPs, Belfast trio Chalk are testament to the power of three.
Where, in the past few years, there seems to have been something in the Dublin water supply to supercharge the city’s guitar bands, its sister capital has carved out a musical niche of its own. The stomping ground of mainstream-crossover local heroes Bicep, Belfast is home to a flourishing electronic scene the likes of which might be more typically found in mainland Europe – and it’s with this musical backdrop in mind that the hybrid sound of Chalk begins to come into focus.
Taking all the best bits of the last decade’s post-punk boom (an unflinching lack of façade and compellingly visceral delivery) and injecting them with the vitality and vigour of the dancefloor, their soon-to-be-trilogy of ‘Conditions’ EPs speak of a band for whom genre is but a word. “We met at film school, and we were big fans of the whole post-punk scene as well, so I think we were maybe writing stuff like that ourselves,” guitarist and synth player Benedict (Ben) Goddard explains, speaking about the band’s earliest days. “But that just seems like such an easy solution when you’re first writing music together, and there are other bands we love like Holy Fuck – ” he pauses, endearingly apologising for swearing “ – that really drive into that electronic soundscape. Those sounds just excite us a lot more.”
Feeding off what drummer Luke Niblock calls Belfast’s “very strong, punky ethos”, the trio (completed by vocalist Ross Cullen) spent “maybe two years” honing their sound, splicing their guitar band DNA with the city’s digital proclivities before diving headfirst into the world of live performance – the context in which they arguably thrive the most. “The live set is always something we’ve been quite proud of since the start,” Luke confirms. “We like to play with emotion in how we structure it; we didn’t want it to just be ‘crash, boom, wallop’.” Instead, he continues, they “adapt the tension throughout the set”, offsetting more atmospheric moments with “an explosion of one of those more guitar-centric tracks.”
“There’s a feeling of euphoria and anxiety we’ve been going between since the first EP.”
— Ross Cullen
The beauty of releasing ‘Conditions’ as they have – as three separate, but linked, EPs – Ross explains, is that it’s allowed them to push the envelope while still maintaining the same thematic or atmospheric touchstones. “There’s a feeling of euphoria and anxiety we’ve been going between since the first EP, which felt right to continue to explore,” he affirms. “But I think we’re moving away from the abstract world [of earlier tracks] and beginning to find comfort in realism and more personal subjects.”
Sonically, the original ‘Conditions’ (2023) foregrounds weighty rock breakdowns, while ‘Conditions II’ (2024) and its forthcoming final piece ‘Conditions III’ (2025) lean far more into electronica, utilising sampling for a collagic masterclass in tension and release. Take the latter’s pummelling lead single ‘Tell Me’; much like the viral interview in which Charli xcx walks us through the sonic arc of ‘365’’s night out, it encodes a whole emotional journey in under three minutes, moving from anxiety-inducing closeness to stabbing synths that recall Psycho’s famous shower scene. Elsewhere, the tightly-coiled spring of ‘Afraid’ (the cut we suspect Luke has in mind when he speaks of “a big riff track”) erupts into driving guitars, echoing IDLES as much as Orbital, while ‘Pool Scene’ and ‘Leipzig 87’, Ross notes, make use of a Moog One synthesiser to “go deeper into the ‘club sound’.”
In a marked change from busy Belfast, this latest EP also saw the band upsticks to rural Iceland to record – a location which both thoroughly satisfied their cinephile tendencies, and injected a healthy dose of delirium into proceedings. “We didn’t see darkness for about a week, and I’m sure that just does something to your head,” Ben says cheerily. “Once, we were in the insane heat of the studio’s hot tub, then I was recording a guitar take literally two minutes later in a robe.” He grins: “I was like, ‘Should we be doing this?’ And our producer was like, ‘This is when we’ll get the great stuff!’” By the sound of Chalk’s third instalment, he wasn’t wrong.
‘Conditions III’ is out 21st February 2025 via Nice Swan Records.
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