Sleeve notes
Squid
Bright Green Field · 2021
Squid formed in Brighton around 2015 while its members were still at university, meeting through the city's small jazz scene before relocating to London and later becoming associated with the same South London Windmill venue as black midi and Black Country, New Road despite their different origins. Drummer Ollie Judge sings while playing, an unusual setup that shapes the band's motorik, dance-punk-adjacent sound as much as their jazz-inflected horn arrangements do.
Bright Green Field, their debut album, arrived in 2021, built around dystopian, environmentally anxious themes delivered through tightly wound, groove-driven arrangements. The band continued touring and recording steadily afterward, releasing a second album a couple of years later and building further on the same restless mix of krautrock repetition and post-punk edge that defined their earliest releases. Squid's sound has remained harder to pin to a single genre than most of the scene they're grouped alongside.
