NOLOGO Debut Interview- 'that little something different'
By Tania Chakraborti
It’s likely you won’t have heard of NOLOGO yet, but trust us, you will, oh-so-very-soon. Made up of production duo Beau Blaise and Rory Bett, the two have been worked behind the scenes with some of the music industry’s biggest names. Beau, having worked with Grammy-nominated producer Johnny Coffer, Jess Glyne and JC Stewart; Rory working with Tom Walker, Isaac Gracie and Francobollo as well as others. Now they emerge with their own eclectic sound that defies categorisation in being that little something different. We sit down with the boys for their first ever interview, to chat about their music and new single ‘Mother’s Money’ ft. SPAREY.
“We’re trying to get loads of different artists out of their sound-world and into our one.”
Rory is from Salisbury, Beau from London. While Rory played clarinet and piano, picking up producing at aged 14; Beau was that classic “kid with a guitar”. Though they come from very different backgrounds, both musically and otherwise, Rory and Beau became best mates at uni, bonding over their love of making dance beats.
When asked why they moved into the realm of pop, Rory jokes that “there was no club in Salisbury that wanted to play House and Techno” tracks. In reality, both Rory and Beau’s separate and individual forays into music, working with different artists and producers, widened their tastes into more diverse genres. With the release of ‘Mother’s Money’, the boys explain that they wanted to test the boundaries of what they were capable of.
Beau says, “we half decided we wanted to make it pop, but strongly influenced by different things that we were influenced by when we were just making [dance and techno] beats. We wanted to make something poppy with rave and slightly 90s influences in the sound design.”
The track features SPAREY’s vocals, as she plays around with gender stereotypes through her lyrical prowess. Beau explains that she came to the studio with a “near-finished tune” and they knew the second they heard her voice that they had to get her on the track as “her voice is wicked”. “She went against the grain with it” in approaching the topic of about gender stereotypes within the track.
“I liked the idea that people could listen to the track not even considering the ‘story’ or ‘message’ but there’s also so much there for the listener to dive into if they choose. So this is what I hope we’ve achieved!”
SPAREY says that “when NOLOGO first sent me the demo I was like okay how can we make a light-hearted bop but also something that has meaning? I liked the idea that people could listen to the track not even considering the ‘story’ or ‘message’ but there’s also so much there for the listener to dive into if they choose. So this is what I hope we’ve achieved! As a queer, female-identifying artist, it’s hugely important to me when writing to talk/sing about these things. I would like to think that parts of the song will resonate differently with each listener, but that’s kind of the point.”
The music video features the NOLOGO lads taking a journey in a car with SPAREY. The boys mention that Jordan Rawi, the Director and the Assistant Director, Oscar Hather “visually matched [the video] really well” with the song. We, as viewers don’t really know where they’re going, or even why, but that’s what makes the video so engaging. We follow them avidly on the journey, and we’re equally pulled in by the track.
“ The music video features the NOLOGO lads taking a journey in a car with SPAREY...We, as viewers don’t really know where they’re going, or even why, but that’s what makes the video so engaging. ”
So what’s next for NOLOGO?
“Over the next year...we’ve got 5 or 6 singles in the works with a bunch of different artists on them…we’ve just got loads of different [collabs]…we’re trying to hit all the different elements that we we’re going to hit with NOLOGO within these first five singles. We’re trying to get loads of different artists out of their sound-world and into our one.”
Stream Mother’s Money here.