Squid

Squid’s new album Cowards, out 7th February 2025 via Warp Records, is about evil. Nine stories whose protagonists reckon with cults, charisma and apathy. Real and imagined characters wading into the dark ocean between right and wrong. 
The first track to be released from Cowards, “Crispy Skin”, features a tense and paranoid sounding Ollie Judge tearing through a richly imagined dystopian world, with the sharpest lyricism partly inspired by the book Tender Is The Flesh, where cannibalism becomes the norm.

Judge adds. “Crispy Skin was lyrically inspired by a dystopian novel I read where cannibalism becomes the societal norm and humans are manufactured and sold in supermarkets. I think when most people read books like these they picture themselves as the sort of person that would take the moral high-ground within these narratives. The track was written about how the reality of having a moral-compass in these stories of desperation and horror would be extremely difficult.”

Watch the official music video for “Crispy Skin” directed by Takashi Ito which adapts his award-winning experimental short film Zone (1995). "A film about a man without a face. His arms and legs bound with ropes, still without even a quiver in a white room. This man, enwrapped in wild delusions, is also a reconstruction of myself. A series of unusual scenes in this room that expresses what lies inside me. I tried to create a connection between memories, nightmares and violent images." - Takashi Ito

On their third album, Cowards, the English art rock quintet extend and explore textures of folk, kosmische, psychedelia, jazz and electronics – hovering at 30,000 feet above distinct tales of human evil: apophenia-tinged songs punched by vantablack comedy. The band recorded Cowards at Church Studios in Crouch End with Mercury prize winning producer Marta Salogni and Grace Banks. On additional production is longtime shifu and collaborator Dan Carey, who recorded the band’s first two albums. The record was mixed in Seattle by John McEntire, before being compressed by the rich analogue chain of Heba Kadry’s mastering in Brooklyn, New York. For additional voice and instruments, Squid called on distinguished friends and musicians: Danish experimental songsmith Clarissa Connelly, composer, pianist and singer Tony Njoku, Rosa Brook from punk group Pozi, percussion wizard Zands Duggan, and Jonny Greenwood collaborators the Ruisi Quartet for violin, viola and cello. The range of sound allowed Squid to push out further, writing arrangements that build into crescendo before sheer-drops into discrete melody. Fleeting voices in eerie rounds, evoke prehistoric song and nursery rhyme.

Last night Squid played an unforgettable show to a rapturous, sold-out New York audience, during the performance they announced details of their new album and performed songs from it for the first time. They are now sharing their UK headline tour dates (listed below) and are offering fans who pre-order Cowards by midnight on Sunday 17th November first access to UK tour presale from midday Monday 18th November. Tickets go on general sale from 10am on Wednesday 20th November.

Squid have come a long way since forming in 2016 as an instrumental jazz band for a monthly night in Brighton whilst living in cheap rented accommodation across the Sussex coast as they finished their studies. The band started expressing influences from outsider punk to Fourth World, and became known for their chaotic and increasingly incendiary live shows. They relocated to London to make the most of their burgeoning reputation, and having heard them at the Brixton institution The Windmill, producer Dan Carey invited them to his studio; releasing a string of fine singles on Speedy Wunderground and the Town Centre EP (2019) which cemented their reputation. An album deal with visionary label Warp followed, and the hype grew further. 

Their debut album Bright Green Field (2021) arrived as the world was starting to open up after the pandemic and they broke into the top 5 in the UK chart. In 2023 they released their sophomore album, the brooding O Monolith, which took the band all over the world and broke new ground that hardly seemed possible five years prior. Like the bravest sophomore albums, O Monolith charted a trajectory beyond their breakthrough sound, taking the band towards an experimental career ahead. Fans growing with them, disseminated alternative versions of songs and demos in setlists and NTS sessions. 

Cowards is Squid’s most courageous album: simultaneously growing in scope and returning to basics, they’ve managed to achieve something new and strangely preternatural. 
Squid are Louis Borlase, Arthur Leadbetter, Laurie Nankivell, Anton Pearson and Ollie Judge