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.

Today, they announce details of Bright Lights, Dead City; their four track debut EP, set to be released 9th June via PRAH Recordings. "White Ring Binder", an unerringly propulsive near-five-minute single, is shared today alongside a music video (WATCH HERE).

"White Ring Binder is about people sharing really intimate things with strangers through poetry. It's also about the connection we make with musicians even when we’ve never met them: the power of music to connect with others and ignite their creativity but also the effect that has on the people involved." - Minor Conflict on "White Ring Binder"

Bright Lights, Dead City is available to pre-order from now from Bandcamp.

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 as-yet unreleased track "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 lead 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.