Festivals Opus Kink: “We’re a few years older, sharper, more jaded, more resolved to fuck the world with it”

Hey guys! Who are we speaking to, and what are you up to? 
You’re speaking to Angus from Opus Kink. I’m sitting on a train stopped just outside of Gatwick trying to remember what I’m worrying about. 

From the looks of it, you’ve had a busy old summer of festival hopping - were there any particularly memorable moments (for better or worse…)? 
Plenty of playing during hellish thunderstorms and torrential rain to half-interested Netherlanders, walking on the ceilings of Parisian clubs with a chopped-off finger and looking for post-show drugs just to end up eating thirteen packets of off-brand Space Invaders in a prison-hostel after getting kicked off stage.

You recently spearheaded ‘A Hideous Collective’ - a compilation album released via your own label, Hideous Mink Records, to raise money for Music Venue Trust and UK Artist Touring Fund. Can you tell us a bit more about the impetus behind the project, and how you pulled it together? 
Jed from the band (and boss of the label) corralled all the bands who contributed. It came from the spark of our generous souls. The music business is a horror on every level… it was time to put our own drop in that ocean. We’re very proud of our cover of Leo Ferre’s ‘Thank You Satan’ that led the release, it’s the first and only English translation to date.

Of your latest single, ‘I’m A Pretty Showboy’, you’ve said: “there is a world in which blues-riff basslines, big-band horns, Black Sabbath breakdowns, Samuel Beckett, breakbeat and trad folk refrains live happily together”. How do you go about combining such myriad or disparate influences? As a six-piece, how do you navigate or refine the different ideas each member brings to the table? 
With pain, glacial effort and recalcitrant hope. 

And, with so much going on musically, what do you think is the uniting element or throughline in your discography that makes a song distinctly ‘Opus Kink’? 
If one could isolate and identify that element, one would… simply our voice and execution I suppose, but God willing that evolves and changes constantly.

‘I’m A Pretty Showboy’ is our first taste of what to expect from what you’ve elusively called “a ‘collection’ of some form”. Heading into the studio to record this ‘collection’, did you find yourselves in a different creative headspace to that of your last EP, ‘My Eyes, Brother!’? 
Yes, because we made that in two and a half days whereas we’ve been working on this record piecemeal for a year. Plenty more time to agonise and second-guess. Which can be a good thing, sometimes, but there’s a limit. And we’re a few years older, sharper, more jaded, more resolved to fuck the world with it.

You’re playing Down Stokes festival this weekend - beyond watching your set (obvs), do you have any top recommendations of things to do in Bristol? 
Form an armada of rented electric scooters and cause traffic collisions up Clifton Hill. Do not jump into the river. Do a switch back 3 down Lloyds…

What can Down Stokes goers expect from your performance? Any surprises or new material you could give us a hint about…? 
The surprises wouldn’t be worth a damn if they weren’t surprises unto us also. So we will see. New material; plenty. Much. The great bowel of song has unclogged and is surging towards the exit.

Find out more and nab tickets for Down Stokes 2025 here. 

Tags: Features, Interviews, Down Stokes, Festivals, Opus Kink