Minor Conflict

Emerging Bristol band MINOR CONFLICT create a unique combination of post-punk and post-folk using harp, bass, drums, trumpet, and synthesiser, underneath vocal lines that flit between the monotonous and the ethereal.

Bright Lights, Dead City, their four track debut EP, is set to be released 18th August via PRAH Recordings. Today, the band share “Second-Hand Time”, a new single which explores the lost futures that haunt our present; another world, always just out of reach.

“"Second-Hand Time" is inspired by the concept of oral histories told from many perspectives, with lyrics shifting perspective and setting, including a rewilded London in the first verse. The references range from Jimmy Reed to Osip Mandelstam and the last letters of Leon Trotsky.” - Minor Conflict on “Second-Hand Time”

In the music video - also launched today - the band perform to the backdrops of the Thamesmead estate and Canary Wharf, the beating pacemaker of the service economy.

“The promise of post-war social democracy intercut with the soulless reality of contemporary neoliberalism. Low angles and concrete islands locate and isolate Josh and Natalie’s piercing stares into the lens as they tell tales of radical ideas and cities being lost and reclaimed.

“Robotic movements and a sense of uniformity of the characters and the landscape were inspired by agitprop imagery, in which people are transformed into icons and individuality is sacrificed for empowerment.

“Without access to a big crew, fancy equipment, or a studio, we had to do a lot of freestyling, and we adapted initial concepts to work with our next-to-zero budget. This came with its advantages — our stripped-back set up helped us repel the hordes of plain-clothed private security guards that skulk the plazas of Canary Wharf.” - George Marigold, director

Bright Lights, Dead City is available to pre-order now from Bandcamp, and the band are on tour this year.

About Minor Conflict and Bright Lights, Dead City

Minor Conflict’s discordant mix of twinkling harp, menacing lo-end strut and deadpan call and response turned heads at the beginning of 2022 on their debut single "Office Block". A snapshot of urban mundanity, the track revelled in the pull and push tension of Natalie Whiteland’s plucked strings and soaring backing vocals, alongside bassist Josh Smyth’s observational lyrics. It brought to mind agit-guitar contemporaries Squid and Pozi – they went onto share multiple stages with the former, while Pozi’s Toby Burroughs produced "Office Block". 

Now a year or so on, the group have readied new material, a thrilling expansion of the themes hinted at on their first single. With Marcus Jefferey joining on drums, Robbie Warin has been freed up to move between trumpet, synths and samples and so creating a subtle and lightly menacing depth around the taut, skeletal vocal and instrumental interplay between Whiteland and Smyth.

The title of the EP comes from some of the lyrics on the new single "Second-Hand Time" and references Jimmy Reed’s 1961 twelve-bar "Bright Lights, Big City". It’s one of many nods within the song’s lyrics to different cultural and historical events - from the poetry of Osip Mandelstam, to David Bowie’s "Diamond Dogs", and author Leon Trotsky’s final letters.

Current creative writing and poetry postgrad Smyth applies these sprinkled reference points to various imaginary observed situations. This is exemplified on previous single "White Ring Binder", which concerns the intimate thoughts and feelings of someone to a stranger they’ve never met via a DIY collection of poems.

“We’re conscious in pushing ourselves and creating something different” they say. “The instrumentation of the band lends itself to that, but we also talk about it in writing sessions and work to explore new combinations of different instruments and voices.”

Written collaboratively at The Cube in Bristol – where they all volunteer – Minor Conflict recorded outside of the city for the first time with three of the songs done with Chris McRory at Glasgow’s Green Door Studio while "Platform 2" was put down at J&J studios in Bristol with Louis O’Hara and Jim Barr. Intros and interludes are just as key as the tracks themselves, giving the EP a constant sense of forward momentum even in moments of apparent calm. Much like Minor Conflict themselves, Bright Light, Dead City is not one for standing still.