This weird, cosmopolitan group of misfits met one another online and are on the brink of their big breakthrough. You might describe them as a true internet start-up. But this artistic superorganism with a passion for pop was founded without a business plan.
© Steph Wilson
| Superorganism
Superorganism, transcending the zeitgeist
Also read: La musique de Feels, feels good
All the band members of Superorganism, save one, now live in the same house in East London. They continue to spend a lot of time at their computers, bombarding one another with cut and paste music, some of which then develops into earworms like “Everybody Wants To Be Famous” and “Something For Your M.I.N.D.”, two songs that they released last year. “Not so much has changed since we lived separately, on four continents,” says Emily, the stage name of the Australian keyboardist Mark Turner.
He affirms that there are a number of striking parallels between the band and the data company that he used to work for. “The big difference between us and other internet start-ups is that our motivations are not corporate but artistic,” Harry says. His name is actually Christopher Young and he is from the North of England, but he met Emily when he was living in New Zealand. “Sharing music online, both our own and other people’s, is what brought us together. Bands just aren’t formed by responding to adverts in (music magazine – TP) NME anymore. I had known Harry for a year before I met him in real life.”
Sharing music online is what brought us together. Bands just aren't formed by responding to adverts in NME anymore.
Am I Empty?
“For our generation, socializing with kindred spirits online is the most normal thing in the world,” Orono continues. She is an 18-year-old Japanese singer who discovered Emily and Harry through YouTube recommendations when she still lived in the US. “The band went through a natural selection process. We may all have different personalities, but we share a cosmopolitan spirit and eclectic taste. (We hear references to Pavement, MGMT, Weezer, Sergeant Pepper’s-era The Beatles… – TP). I used to live in a village in Japan, where I didn’t have very many friends and I was pretty lazy. You can imagine that I would often just stay at home and make music on my computer.”
She could access the whole world with the click of a button. “We are actually all misfits who could make music anywhere,” Harry adds. “I wouldn’t know how to make friends in real life. Luckily I’m in a band now so I meet a lot of new people automatically.” Orono Noguchi knows the feeling: “When I moved to London when I was 17, I installed all these really shitty dating apps to make friends, but it never worked.”
But this social awkwardness did not stop them from consciously becoming part of an eight-member band, which includes songwriters and musicians, but also a visual artist. “We complement one another,” Emily says. “Through our natural selection, we spontaneously move in the same direction.” Harry reminds us that any big mainstream pop production – take Beyoncé for example – is also backed up by a big team of people, “they just don’t market it like that.” There is no profound message, he says: “We balance somewhere between extreme lightness and darkness.”
But Orono, the lyricist, thinks it is very cool that some people interpret the “M.I.N.D.” in “Something For Your M.I.N.D.” as “Am I empty?” “More than an outright message, these are small provocations that ask you: ‘But what do you think?’,” Emily concludes. “We don’t mind being called a product of our time, as long as people realize that creativity is timeless. I am absolutely convinced that if (American rapper – TP) A$AP Rocky had been born in the early 1950s, he would have made his breakthrough in the late 1960s, and that if Brian Wilson had been born in the 1990s, he would still have become a revolutionary musician. Musical talent and ingenuity transcend the zeitgeist.”
> Superorganism. Botanique, 19/2. 19u30
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