FAT CONCUBINE: EMPIRE/ROOOAAAR – Review & Interview

Fat Concubine: EMPIRE/ROOOAAAR

Ahead of the release of their latest single, ROOOAAAR, and following their debut EP, EMPIRE, Louder Than War talks to  FAT CONCUBINE about their philosophies on the dissonant beauty of life, swing-as-punk, the unsettling allure of techno parties in all their exotic, tribal arrangement and the group’s quickly unfurling trajectory as one of electronic music’s finest underground renegades. Interview by Ryan-Lewis Walker.

Avant-garde at heart, but with a hard-edged exterior. Or, maybe that’s the other way around? After all, nothing is ever exactly as it appears with FAT CONCUBINE. Formed of Suzanne (Singer, Loop Machine, Guitar) and HANNYA (Rhythm Performer, Percussions, Vocals), there’s a simplicity to what they do, to what they want, to who they are, but in a way that the classic pantheon of ancient Greek philosophers would be able to articulate something profoundly soul-enriching (or profoundly simple, we just fail to recognise it) – that simplicity becomes another weblike layer to wade through in the mists of inquiry, another thread in the fascinating entanglements of abstraction that makes them (despite their open-invite to collaborations, and admittance they don’t identify strictly as a duo) a band already peaking at cult-status entity level quite like anything else around.

But, considering the band’s interest in the punk thrust of swing music, but also in ”rave chaos and theatrical ruin”, in the incineration of Rome as a symbol of society gone mad, in an obsession with capital letters and their subsequently bizarre ignorance to any grammatical rule (see: for Who The Bell tolls, when we kick Their front door) and in ”resistance, dominance, and power”…that’s just fine. They can do what the fuck they please. Their latest single, ROOOAAAR is, after all, superb. A propulsive metallic chug of glitchy, acid squiggles and Vega-in-a-black-hole vocals. Epic and industrial, with the eyes of a reptile. How did this all come together, then?
AA”We were introduced to a group of people and agreed upon certain things,” states Suzanne of their ambitions when starting the band. ”We promised not to talk about the agreement; in return, we get what we want, as we are kind people with the ability to ask nicely.”

Pacts with the supernatural aside, perhaps a more concrete record of how the band came to be can be as follows: ”FAT CONCUBINE was formed in London’s most glorious dive bar, The Old Dispensary (Camberwell). We played a spontaneous set with a friend on guitar dressed like Alcatraz prison guards in wigs until the PA blew up after 10 minutes. After that a guy from Brixton Buzz asked for our band name. HANNYA said ‘FAT CONCUBINE’.”

Another account from a piece of scripture that denies all legitimacy, but still inflates the myth to a degree we cannot help but a little bit, proclaims the formation of FAT CONCUBINE happened either ”behind a burning barricade in Paris…or during art studies.”

Which path of narrative you take is entirely up to you.

Musically speaking, FAT CONCUBINE ticks a multitude of different boxes. A searing, laser beam of rave mania, a brothel of fax tone scrambles and scratches of air vent atmospherics, but rough-around-the-edges-raw and mutant-cool as though everything has been done in one take, because anything more would be doing it for reasons that are impure, or insincere. It’s weird and druggy, dirty and sexy, unsettling and alluring.

Their influences ooze stimulating mosaics of high-art sold to audiences as a screaming effigy at street-level, give us but a glimpse into their world. Everything from Mandy Indiana to Marilyn Manson, The Prodigy to Puscifer, photographer Hedi Slimane to Silverwingkillers, Bathing Suits to Brutalismus 3000, and Depeche Mode to Belgian fashion designer Ann Demeulemeester are referenced as having some sort of seamless, interlinked impression upon the band’s outlook on their art. All can be absorbed. All can be used. Nothing is to be ignored.

Attempts to unveil everything with an explanation are rapidly squashed by a line or two from Suzanne. Yet those lines wrap up and summarise every aspect of their history so far that fails to warrant needing much more than that – the mystique is perfect. The desire to dig deeper is ever-present, and therefore, perfect. The game is never given away. The experience explains everything. Do we need more than we know? Who knows.
AA”Fashion, modelling, art, a dysfunctional yet entertaining family,” says Suzanne. ”It’s all playing a part. HANNYA opened a new world to me. As I met her, I stopped doing music for a while, as the stuff she introduced me to was so good. I had to let it settle a bit.”

A trumpet bleeds and signals a fire in the distance. The trumpet turns into fire. The distance falls away. A catwalk of hobgoblins in transparent cagoules flock towards it like the streetwalkers of social media to a new brand of device – an instant feed into the moment like a flick knife to the sides of a dead seal. That’s merely a single select scene, from a section of a single song that beams into the centre of one’s mind when listening to feeding off the dogs, the opening tune from EMPIRE, their debut EP released via Cruel Nature in September last year.
AAIn fact, the entire EP, widely acclaimed as far as South London and New York dare to direct you towards, is a lot like this. A dribble of synth hits, cheap and bleeding but do the job, sustaining enough momentum keep up the chase just fine. Manic and daft, serious and poetic, carefree and calculated to the point teeth are chipped and skin is torn, injured groans, sensuous yelps and squelches, punch through a womb of scorched bogland and lime bubblegum.

Vital single, for Whom The Fools toll, is a giddy, gabber workout of caustic, electronic washes, interdimensional karaoke voices, intense beats blasting and lashing throughout whilst a high-pitched frequency hovers above an ominous army of belching trumpets. So too, does When we kick Their front door share a similarly bizarre energy. A hands-in-the-air climax of bloodless techno beats hammering directly down the middle of tortured-photocopier spirits, whirring signals, lift shaft clatters. Enter and watch.

A rendition of Lee Hazlewood’s These Boots Were Made For Walking, it sees both the 1920s’-30s swing influence put into practice, with Suzanne’s Vega-in-a-black-hole barks sparking into insane levels of ceiling-slashing chaos. Next, tiny pills, a song about ”ending a toxic relationship, though not necessarily a romantic one. It could be any destructive attachment,” sees spillages of spidery guitars spin webs over reverb-bent vocals, crooning and creaking away in the corner of an empty chamber. A military ballad to a dancefloor to an ashtray. The raw, techno tightening its grip the more chattering, percussive patterns and wrangles of jelly bass strut their stuff in moody, industrial mannerisms.

Finally, O so Peaceful, recorded at Brixton’s Windmill in 2025, offers a version of the band at their finest state of live power. Synths scribble over silences like pens doodle over notebook covers or graffiti pisses on concrete bridges. Beats are beaten into pulp then brought back into focus with even more bite. Instruments are evaporated with gamma rays then gruesomely emerge with a penchant for even more frenzy. This allows us to spot the spontaneous nature of the band, live in action: a synergy between HANNYA’s rhythms and Suzanne’s vapourised vocals, a mad, mutual battle between loops on the point of becoming lost in time forever, but then get dragged back into the fore in a form of a new, misshapen breed of hot steel and smelly rubber.

”Born and raised in South London’s underground scene” – FAT CONCUBINE have carved out quite a name for themselves: feral features whereby rave music comes more frazzled and raw that a vintage duffer bag, where synths squeal like kissing corpses wrapped up in freshly sliced clingfilm, all cutting through with a commanding sense of post-punk chaos. Do they have a desire to remain underground? Rewards, although worth it, are achieved through endurance, after all. That’s the genuine repayment for underground work: the ecstasy of endurance. ”You shall see. Why? Do you have a job to offer? Haha! The up? Independence. The down? Independence.”

Independence with a capita I. Or maybe INDEPENDENCE, with everything with a caps lock hard-on. Their first single release MAD MAN, felt like a noisier, nastier, no wave post-punk record but still leaned into that feral, rave territory – fast and meaty beats, murky synths and spooky, incanted barks. Is the new stuff more ravey due to members coming and going, and now being a unit of two based around the core of you both?
AA”EMPIRE channels the energy of release and self-liberation: resistance, dominance, power. Play on while Rome burns,” the band states. ”It’s the drive. The core energy. Cutting through the noise. No chance to hide.
AA”The line-up changed, but the intent didn’t,” they add. ”As a two-piece everything became leaner, faster and more direct, so naturally the new stuff hits different and leans further into the rave energy. The core is the two of us, but we wouldn’t define it as a duo. We’re open to collaborators and have often had spontaneous guest musicians join us on stage — sometimes people we’d never met before. You never know what’s going to happen, and it can all go wrong. That unpredictability excites us. You meet fearless people that way.”

Fearless to the core, throughout, there’s a lot about Rome burning – symbol of society gone mad, hold onto your socks and let loose, the battle will commence, and we can, if we so please, command the elements and crush the earth as a sugar cube would melt in a cup of hot tea. ”We don’t know about that,” they state. ”It’s not for us to decide who has gone mad. Hold onto your socks if you want to. The sound will take it either way.”
AABut still, with Rome in ruins, a scene we are dropped into the core of, or cannot help but be transfixed by in the rear-view mirror, that image of anarchy makes for a highly dynamic performance.

In a live sense, the band attack with a singular vision every time in how they push and incite the adorning throngs of unanimous activity into feverish movements of flesh and sweat, where shining tokens of bones are commanded into states of spellbound compliance via these tactical, magic chants. But does so in a way that feels positively confrontational and thrillingly raw. The collective engines always ignited. You can taste spray paint in your nostrils. On the edge, and unafraid to jump off. The energy is handheld. It could disintegrate or fasten itself to you. Feed on your wrist. Fuck your neck to the veins.
AA”It comes naturally and stays natural. A rhythm or vague vocals show the direction. HANNYA loves techno parties. I can find them rather creepy… unsettling. But we both love the tribal, driving element of it all. It comes with a natural high. That tension between love, fear, and primal instincts—it’s a fuel. Playing live is sacred, nasty, sweaty, fast, sexy. Most of our songs are developing live. It’s pleasure, love, dangerous, chaos and dense.

A record rooted in friction, relishing in the dissonances that exist, squarely squirming in the crevices between a spectrum of subjects, that special something that happens when pieces detonate upon enforced connection makes FAT CONCUBINE an interesting ride to buckle into. What breathes in-between the obvious births a fantastic abnormality. And out of that – a great, gyrating, gestating, bludgeon of beauty.
AA”Power struggles, inner battles, submission, obsession, resistance and love: the sound of EMPIRE,” the band states. ”Your feet are moving. Your body is moving. And the noise in your head cuts out. Clarity. That’s the friction.”

Between love, fear, and the primordial tap begging to be turned that unleashes our deepest impulses as a species silenced into crisis, the announcement of a residency project at Brooklyn’s Alphaville will surely be a career-defining statement. An appropriate space to stage the full spectrum of FAT CONCUBINE’s vibe, and all those important valleys, those vital frictions, buzzing in-between.
AA”Yeah, it’s kinda unreal. We were invited to play at the New Colossus Festival on the Lower East Side this year. Which was our USA debut. Rick Owens then announced all our New York dates on his main socials, and one thing led to another. We’ve ended up with a monthly residency at Alphaville in Brooklyn every 1st Friday of the month, beginning in Fall 2026. Robert Prichard (Co-founder of Radio Free Brooklyn) was the one who came up with the idea that we should get ourselves a base in New York. As for what shall happen at our Alphaville residency: Euphoria. Dance. Mosh. Sweat and initiation.”

Electroswing, this is not, thank Jesus. The swing influence in FAT CONCUBINE, although hard to place at first, upon a few repeated listens, starts to make perfect sense. Like Duke Ellington on Dekmantel makes sense, or Sinatra remixed by Sandwell District until all that remains is a fedora and a cigarette butt makes sense, or Bunny Berigan on PBitch makes perfect sense.
AA”I just love it. It has this easiness. A simplicity. It’s hovering and thriving like a rollercoaster,’’ explains Suzanne. ”It’s the swing. The driving melodies. If one digs deeper, it’s the music of defiance, resistance, and the underground. Punk even. Dance, dance, dance. Tomorrow, we’re all dead. It’s romantic, but aggressively flirty all at once.”

Resistance. Dominance. Power. Big words. Bold claims. But if somebody should sweep into view and reclaim them as methods of strange havoc and beautiful art, then let it be FAT CONCUBINE. If any rules survive, and if anyone is sexy enough to abide by them: sweat and initiation will be the last-standing plaque nailed into the last-standing column that holes up the last-standing ceiling in the world.

Just who decides who or what makes the world a mad place to live? Fat Concubine are onto something. No way out, no way in – you have been here all along.

~

ROOOAAAR | May 8th

EMPIRE | order HERE

FAT CONCUBINE | Instagram | Bandcamp 

Cruel Nature | Bandcamp

Ryan-Lewis Walker | Louder Than War

Photography | Liz McCarthy ©