ARXX

In the organizer's words:

Presented by MoreCore

Support: Lener

"Ride Or Die". It's a phrase full of intensity and absoluteness - a declaration of unconditional, unwavering loyalty, fueled by love. As the title for the debut album from ARXX - the Brighton duo who have quickly become one of the most exciting bands on the UK music scene - it's a fierce summation of their entire ethos and unquenchable passion for music. "There's no such thing as giving up," explains singer and guitarist Hanni Pidduck. "If we give up, we just lose what's most important to us."

Since joining forces in 2017, the pair have demonstrated this resolute dedication through their infectious live show and a string of singles and EPs, including early releases 'Daughters Of Daughters EP' (2018) and 'Wrong Girl, Honey EP' (2019). Along the way, the duo have received praise from NME, DIY, The Forty-Five, BBC Radio 1 and many more, and have risen through the ranks of touring, supported by support slots with the likes of The Big Moon, Dream Wife and Pillow Queens.

However, ARXX's success was never a foregone conclusion - not least because both Hanni and drummer Clara Townsend reckoned with their musical futures before joining forces. Hanni's old drummer had moved to Australia and she was struggling to find someone who would take the project seriously. Clara also found it difficult to find someone who was as committed to the music as she was.

Although they were not friends before Clara showed up for the "audition" (although Hanni later revealed that she was the only candidate), they had played together in their respective old bands and knew and respected each other's musicality. At this first real meeting, they immediately clicked and a great partnership was formed. "After I met Hanni and we played a few shows together, I thought, 'This is the funniest thing ever'," says Clara. "I don't think I'd had that feeling before, and we couldn't stop saying yes to everything for three years."

After they found each other, ARXX didn't just sit around waiting for others to ask them or give them permission to do something. Instead, as you would expect from a band dedicated to their work, they dove headfirst into making it happen. With the limited experience they had gained in their old projects, the new band members organized their own gigs and tours and looked for budget-friendly ways to get their music on record.

"I had waited so long that I just wanted to get started," says Hanni. "So we recorded very, very quickly. In the first few weeks, we rehearsed three times a week and tried to get a set together." To go on tour, they looked around at their peers, like the Nova Twins, and wondered how they could do the same things. "We found out that there was no rulebook for how to tour Europe, for example. We thought, 'Well, I've got a car, there's two of us, we can both fit in'. So that's how you get there and then you just write to people on Facebook and say, 'We want a gig', and it really worked."

As ARXX have grown as a band, so has their sound. The early tracks were rage-fueled blasts that once served a purpose for Hanni, the duo's main lyricist: She began writing songs in her youth to "fulfill a desperate need to find a way to express herself." However, as she grappled with the issues that caused her anger, she no longer felt the need to "lose my shit and thrash around".

Slowly, the songs have become poppier and more polished, dredging up the hooks that have always been at the heart of songs like "Y.G.W.Y.W. (You Got What You Want)" and "Tired Of You". Hanni claims to have grown up listening to country music - also known as "slow pop music" - which is one reason her songs lean towards pop, while Clara also grew up with the genre and was inspired early on to play along to songs by Pink, Katy Perry and Mika in her bedroom.

The collaborators they have surrounded themselves with have also led them down new paths. Longtime producer Steve Ansell of Blood Red Shoes and mastering engineer Katie Tavini (Pillow Queens, Arlo Parks) - who both worked on "Ride Or Die" - were instrumental in the band's development. "He has a real pop sensibility and so do we, and I think it just fits so well together," Hanni says of Steve. "We're so lucky to have found him because he really understands what we're trying to do. Katie is perhaps the best mastering engineer we've ever met - she's really sensitive to what she's doing. She's very particular about what she does and makes everything sound great in different ways."

Satisfied with where they are on their sonic journey, "Ride Or Die" serves as a broader introduction to ARXX. The artwork, designed by Brighton artist Bonnie And Clyde, reflects this. It shows the band on the front cover in a rural setting, surrounded by things more commonly associated with the desert. On the back, the scenario is reversed. It represents the fusion of the two musicians - Hanni's rural upbringing and Clara's youth growing up in Dubai.

The album is a bold, bright record that puts Hanni's personal experiences at the center of the songs. The lyrics are honest and literal and don't shy away from calling a spade a spade - a move inspired by the singer and guitarist's love of Kate Nash. "Kate Nash's lyrics are so honest that sometimes you almost cringe at how literal she is," Hanni explains. "You're writing about what happened to you, and you're not writing for someone else."

This songwriting approach began with "The Last Time," a glossy, emotional account of the aftermath of a breakup that the author describes as liberating. "The first like was, 'Pack up your stuff to send back,' and I had literally just done that," she recalls. "I came home from the post office and was very upset and just wrote exactly what I had done. Maybe there's this pressure to write more intelligently or more poetically, but I just wrote exactly what I'd experienced.

A re-recorded version of "Call Me Crazy" with Pillow Queens shows ARXX at her most uncompromising, with Hanni speaking openly about her experiences with mental health. The subject matter shows that they don't want to sugarcoat life's problems. "If you're trying to give an honest account of yourself, then the difficult things are part of it," Hanni reasons. "It was very important to us to sing about it and not make it a big deal. It should be normal to talk about it."

For those already familiar with the pair's sound, the danceable direction some of the tracks take may come as a surprise. But it's a move that suits the band well and allows more room for invention. "Deep" almost broke the band, but eventually found its final form through the inspiration of a playlist they had running in the studio. "There was a lot of Muna on there, a lot of Maggie Rogers, Timbaland, a lot of St. Vincent," Clara recalls. "We just went down this weird rabbit hole of edgy pop".

On the metallic, pounding "God Knows", they play with Auto-Tune, Hanni's voice enveloped by the effect that smooths her vocals into something worthy of a sci-fi theme song. However, before there were lyrics, chords or sounds for this track, it existed in the duo's minds as a scene that would take place in a movie. "We had the idea that it should be like a drive through a city at night where there are neon lights everywhere," Hanni explains. "To me, it really fits that vibe of Dua Lipa or The Weeknd. Without the Auto-Tune, though, it sounds like a country song."

"Ride Or Die" is unpredictable and captivating and shows a band bursting with ideas and not afraid to take them in new and unusual directions without compromising on pop directness. The album is bursting with passion and excitement, a result of the continued commitment of its creators to follow the path the music sets before them. As musicians deeply in love with what they do, their ambitions for the future are modest, such as being able to sustain the band as a career or just keep it going in some form, but their debut album cannot be denied - ARXX are on their way to gigantic things.