Lunch Money Life

“Cataclysmic hellfire crescendos are mangled with staggering percussion, shredding guitars and synths” Loud and Quiet

“Lunch Money Life bring something new to a London scene that has produced so many riches already” The Quietus

“Screeching blurts of noise overlap with a chugging, slightly-off drum beat and Auto-Tuned vocals in the experimental five-piece’s latest” The Guardian

Lunch Money Life are back with their exuberant new single ‘Mother’, enlisting the help of two venomous MC’s from opposite sides of the Atlantic. London’s Lady Lykez, who recently released her critically acclaimed ‘Woza’ EP on Hyperdub, joins Suku Ward, Jamaican dancehall royalty and one third of the legendary trio Ward 21.

‘Mother’ arrives alongside news of their hotly-anticipated sophomore album ‘The God Phone’ which is released on 9 June via Wolf Tone. ‘The God Phone’ is the soundtrack to a canned studio film script. The feature-length theological thriller is set on Earth twenty five years after science proves the existence of God, a global council consolidates its power with technology that allows them to communicate directly with the heavens. Further reading on ‘The God Phone’ is encouraged here.

On their new single, Lunch Money Life largely trade in their usual unhinged live instrumentation for brash rave stabs, sparse and distorted programmed drums and a one tonne synth bass, allowing Lady Lykez and Suku Ward to rain hell over a bone-crushing and anxiety-inducing instrumental, in turn humiliating their enemies and chastising the tyrannical powers that be.

Lunch Money Life on ‘Mother’: “The instrumental for 'Mother' was beamed into our brains during a late night jam and we knew it was tailor-made for the film’s most violent scene. Poisonous vocals were a necessity and by the time the morning rolled in, the truth had been revealed: Lady Lykez & Suku Ward. The music of Ward 21 has shaped our lives, so having Suku on board is nothing short of a dream come true (shoutout Time Cow for the intro); and we knew that Lady Lykez alone had the lyrical and technical prowess to complete the track. Both acts fully understood the brief and delivered the goods accordingly.”

On previous single ‘Telecommunion’ - the first track to be lifted from ‘The God Phone’ - mangled guitars collide with ecclesiastical bells, warped synths, lonesome auto-tuned vocals and a bashment-tinged rhythm section - resulting in a curious slice of angst-ridden rock’n’b that lands somewhere between 702, The Human League and Smashing Pumpkins.

Lunch Money Life is a five-piece band with no remit. All music is composed communally and spontaneously. Having released their debut album ‘Immersion Chamber’ as the crest of the pandemic crashed down across the world, the group (consisting of Jack and Spencer Martin on keys, electronics and vocals, Stewart Hughes on drums, Luke Mills-Pettigrew on bass and Sean Keating on guitar) were forced into an extended period of hibernation around its release. Thankfully, Spencer’s ongoing work as an organist for an East London diocese eventually afforded them access, time and space to turn their music inside out in a cold and cavernous local church hall.

It was during this forced hiatus from performing live and recording that the band were able to totally deconstruct, rebuild and refine their music, returning with a more rugged, adept and poised sound. The immediate result of this intense and isolated period can be heard on their most recent EP’s; 2021’s ‘Tarmac The Lake’ and 2022’s ‘Under The Mercies’, for which the latter’s lead single, ‘Jimmy J Sunset’, was nominated for “Track of the Year” at Gilles Peterson’s Worldwide Awards. While both releases give a clear insight into Lunch Money Life’s current creative world, it’s their live show that offers the most unmediated and unadulterated way to experience their music, combining the energy of the most unhinged punk show with the tightness of the most well rehearsed jazz fusion group and the ecstatic dynamics of the most dramatic club music, often topped off with an unhealthily large dose of hazers and the occasional flash bang and/or military strength smoke grenade.

As 2023 begins to gather steam, the five-piece ready their most accomplished, daring, and vulnerable music to date.