Sleaford Mods have shared the powerful new single ‘Megaton’ in aid of War Child – check it out below.
- READ MORE: Sleaford Mods’ Jason Williamson on his past feud with Noel Gallagher and the duo’s next move
Post-punk duo Jason Williamson and Andrew Fearn have today (September 16) released the latest project in their ongoing partnership with the charity, which will see all profits from the single donated to support life-changing work with children affected by conflict.
Alongside the digital release, a seven-inch single featuring the track ‘Give ‘Em What They Want’ as its B-side is now available for pre-order here.
“Megaton, No War No Death!” frontman Williamson declares in the track’s central rallying cry. “We should be aligned with one another, but instead we are crippled by social media and the resulting separatism,” he added in a press release.
“Genocide… swipe… gym bods… swipe… food pics… swipe… starvation. Killing upon killing, so much terrible, horrifying information followed by a cat meme followed by faces filtered beyond recognition.”
“Such is the weight of trauma, guilt and powerlessness in privileged societies that we squirm like an overloaded petri dish full of algae fed by the algorithm,” he continued. “Everything is wrong and everything as a reaction is argued to be right, and in this we give birth to behaviours that smother solidarity and cause mass waves of haemorrhaging alienation while the world quietly collapses offscreen.”
The track comes accompanied by a Nick Waplington-directed video, filmed at Speaker’s Corner in London’s Hyde Park, which has housed speeches and discussions since the 1800s, and places the band at the literal heart of the debate. Waplington, who shares a connection with the band through their shared history in Nottingham, went on to explain that what began as a photoshoot concept quickly developed into an idea for a video.
“At a moment in history when our rights to protest, to freely assemble, and to freedom of speech seem under attack, while paradoxically being used in new and novel ways through social media and the internet it felt like the perfect idea to collaborate with the lyrically dexterous Sleaford Mods at one of Britain’s oldest bastions of free expression, Speakers’ Corner,” he said.
“It’s great to see this idea come to fruition. The track is fantastic, and I really think this film does it justice.”
‘Megaton’ is available to stream now, and a seven-inch edition will be out on red vinyl on Rough Trade Records’ web store here, on blue from indie record shops and on general sale on black wax.
The band previously teamed up with Hot Chip on ‘Nom Nom Nom’ and ‘Cat Burglar’, with both of those tracks also in aid of War Child. Williamson had mentioned the collaboration during an interview with NME last year, in a conversation that saw the frontman share his his thoughts on Oasis’ dynamic pricing controversy and Mods’ decision to offer five-pound gig tickets to fans on low incomes.
Elsewhere in the chat, he also revealed that Sleaford Mods were “starting a new album”, adding: “We’ve had a few sessions already. Things aren’t so much shaping up; it takes a while to get back into the groove of it.
“You always go in with: ‘I wanna try this, I wanna try that.’ And you try it and it doesn’t quite work, so eventually you go back to the formula but there is all of this subconscious change – life, I guess – that then applies itself to the formula, and it then changes. Not massively, but it shifts along. So it’s like a chemistry lesson!”
Williamson went on: “I wanna go rap-centric, or rant. It’s just gonna be blocks of shouting again – as per usual! [Laughs] You learn to fall in love again with the formula. I’m lucky I’ve got Andrew Fearn, really. His music is like a whole universe of selection. It’s like getting into a spaceship and taking your pick for two weeks!”
