Who is popular today?

The Bristol-born multi-instrumentalist’s bass vocals, oblique lyrics and taste for the atonal make for unsettling, off-kilter lounge musicBingo Fury’s music is ruled by chance moments, as likely to feature the sound of breaking glass as a chord sequence. Taking cues from Captain Beefheart and Laurie Anderson, the 24-year-old Bristolian, real name Jack Ogborne, creates noir ballads characterised by their dissonance, his guttural baritone underscoring experimental orchestration and fragmented noise. There are competing horn sections, scrambled piano interludes, moments of static and droll lyrics. “This is a new kind of pain before you cross-stitch my soul,” he croons on Leather Sky. Latest single Mr Stark is a semi-improvised patchwork of skittish rhythms and laconic one-liners.The convenience of a studio is not for Fury; he prefers more atmospheric locations. His 2022 debut EP, Mercy’s Cut, was recorded in the basement of a pub said to be a former hangman’s quarters, and he camped out in a church to make new album Bats Feet for a Widow. Having spent his childhood drumming in a church band, the singer-songwriter channelled lingering feelings of religious unease while absorbing the building’s acoustic textures, from the echoes bouncing off its high ceiling to the clatter of a falling crucifix in I’ll Be Mountains. Continue reading...