VMAN Music

Listen up! These rising musicians are making their voices heard, seen here rocking noisemaking emerging designers.

In 2015, electronic producer Oscar Powell (better known by his surname) emailed legendary noise-rock producer Steve Albini to clear a sample of one of his songs, to which Albini replied with a rant about his deep loathing of electronic dance music. Powell’s next move? Slapping the message across billboards around London as a means of promoting the record. “If you’re going to [promote] a record, you might as well try and do it in a fun way,” Powell says— before caveating: “Although even if I have a sense of humor, it doesn’t mean I don’t take my music seriously. The next stuff I do might not be so flamboyant. Let’s see,” he laughs.

Powell’s journey to becoming one of London’s most highly regarded underground dance producers has been as unconventional as his approach to promo. Making music as a hobby since he was 15, Powell eventually mustered up the courage to contact one of his heroes, techno artist Regis, who set him on the path to establishing his record label Diagonal—a breeding ground for some of London’s most ambitious electronica, from Blood Music to Handy. “I never really thought I was any good at it,” he adds. “It just took somebody saying they liked it for me to start.”

Powell’s signature style can be described as a computer music aesthetic laid over with punk samples. As cacophanous as that sounds, Powell’s unlikely mashups always come together as post-punk, hypnotic thrashes. “Sometimes dance just needs a big fucking injection of energy, something to go against how boring, anodyne, and predictable Internet-era dance music can be,” he says. Now signed to XL Recordings, home to artists like Jamie XX and Adele, Powell’s recent releases include his EP with artist Wolfgang Tillmans, produced under the collaborative moniker Powell Tillmans. Next, he’ll try his hand at his first full-length album. “I still haven’t quite cracked the medium yet,” says Powell of LPs—a relative rarity in electronic. But for Powell, it seems, the rarer the better.

Menswear may be having a moment, but it’s worth noting that much of that buzz can be traced to a freer exchange between masculine and feminine aesthetics (including to that of Berlin-based label GmbH, which draws inspiration from nightlife culture) as Cosmo Pyke echoes when prompted for a fashion role-model. “Erykah Badu,” he says, pushing his unruly dreads out of his eyes as he sprawls himself across an armchair. “The way she presents herself is so powerful. She’s just fucking cool, man.” Given Pyke’s relaxed nature— he’s so laid-back he borders on horizontal—it figures that he’d worship a neo-soul goddess who’s known for her anything-goes ensembles.

Since bursting onto the music scene in 2017 with his EP Just Cosmo, 20-year-old Pyke has become South London’s very own pied piper, drawing a growing flock of like-minded fans with easy, breezy tunes informed by everything from his childhood love of Joni Mitchell and his teenage years spent knocking around Nunhead Reservoir smoking and making graffiti art. “My upbringing wasn’t mad,” he says, “but it was a bit unorthodox: My mum was a feminist in Brixton back in the day and was in an all-female punk band called Clapperclaw, but my dad is an architect from Jamaica.”

He later attended the BRIT School, where he was in the same class as fellow up-and-comers Rex Orange

County and Raye. “We were always told that we were better off working behind the scenes,” he says of his schoolboy years, “but I was determined to give performing a go. Earlier in the year, Rex and I were performing at Summer Sonic [Festival] in Japan and it felt like we proved ourselves to those teachers.” It’s been nearly two years since Pyke dropped any new music, and his forthcoming EP comes with a new sound he calls “rasta folk.” But for fans forecasting, after two years, some kind of dramatic stylistic pivot, rest assured: Pyke is nothing if not consistent. “I was born in my room in Peckham and I still sleep there to this day,” he says. “I’m a creature of habit.”

“Style can be misleading,” says Kelvin Bueno, the bassist for Outer Stella Overdrive and one-half of the music collective Saz. In lieu of “style,” Bueno seems to rock a preternatural, no-upkeep-required coolness—sometimes making his pop-cultural affiliations hard to read. “People see me dressed comfortably and they read it as street. They never guess that my main thing is rock music,” he says.

But sporting a leather two-piece by Mowalola Ogunlesi— the breakout Lagos-born designer inspired by everything from Nigerian biker culture to psychedelic rock—there’s no mistaking Bueno’s capacity for experimentation.

As in the case of the Central St. Martins–trained Ogunlesi, Bueno’s experimentalism is rooted in structure; he started piano at eight and performed in five jazz bands before studying music computing at Goldsmiths. Today, his two musical endeavors offer each style an outlet, with Saz, a partnership with friend Zane Morris, being more freeform, and Outer Stella Overdrive, “a lot more structured,” Bueno says. The Brit pop–inspired Outer Stella Overdrive, which Bueno shares with Rafferty Law, son of Jude and brother of Bueno’s girlfriend, Burberry-approved model Iris Law, released their first track, “State Your Name” back in November, a millennial call to arms about wasted ambition and pulling yourself out of a creative rut.

It’s something Bueno can relate to. “I struggled in school and the only thing that got me through were my music lessons: I ended up pretty depressed when I was about 14 or 15 and at that age you don’t know how to talk about it,” he says. Now balancing his two musical gigs, Bueno is relishing the workload. “I’m doing 12-hour shifts in the studio every day, and it doesn’t even feel like work,” he says. There might be guaranteed music in the pipeline, but given Bueno’s eclectic track record, what it will sound like is anyone’s guess.

“I think I was just walking around the house singing to myself, when my mum stopped me and said, ‘Cole, you can really sing,’” says Col3trane, the musical wunderkind who, at 19 years old, has been setting an ambitious new agenda for British R&B since the release of his first EP, Tsarina, in 2017. A contemporary take on Homer’s Odyssey set in present-day London, the record is just as likely a reference to popping Valium after leaving the rave as it is an ode to the mythical Spartan princess Penelope.

“There’s so much depth to something like The Odyssey, so many layers,” says Col3trane. “When a story like that has been retold so many times, there’s a lot of soul to it.” With crystal-clear vocals and a flair for storytelling that has drawn him comparisons to Frank Ocean, Col3trane takes the introspection up a notch with his latest release, 2018’s BOOT. With the single “Tyler,” BOOT aptly channels both the grit of Tyler the Creator with the smoother sounds of the Odd Future founder’s various spin-offs, from Ocean to Syd tha Kyd. Weaving in throwback D’Angelo vibes, it’s a sonic cocktail that manages to be both undeniably of the moment and timeless.

Born and raised in London, to Egyptian-American parents, Col3trane seems destined to become a global nomad. “Touring a lot means traveling a lot, so I’ve got no problem with that,” he says. “It’s crazy to me, going to all of these places I never thought I would.” Then again, a life on the road feels appropriate for a modern-day Odysseus.

“Where I grew up, there’s quite an interesting history with religion,” says the Anglo-French musician Lauren Auder, whose parents decamped to the town of Albi in the south of France when he was a child. “In the middle of the town there’s a huge looming cathedral, which has [stayed with me]. I think anyone who has been lost, even if they don’t believe in [religion], longs for that understanding.”

It’s this grasp on universal themes mixed with Soundcloud savvy that earned the 21-year-old a cult fanbase. While his references aren’t religious, there’s a mythical all-knowingness to Auder. “I was exposed to a very broad range of music when I was young,” he says. “Growing up I thought I was going to be a designer or an artist.” The eureka moment came after listening to the Walker Brothers’s “The Electrician”—an influence still felt not just in Auder’s epic, cinematic sound but also his brooding vocals.

The son of London-based music editors, who eventually relocated the family to his mother’s native France, Auder’s ethereal style and androgynous features have carried him most recently to Hedi Slimane’s inaugural campaign for Celine. But his delicate exterior can be deceiving: On tracks he’s produced for a coterie of French rappers, the power of Auder’s deep, lilting voice shines through the chopped-and-screwed production and stuttering beats. Gearing up to release his second EP, he notes that his sound has changed since his return to London. “I’m still interested in contrasts, but my new music definitely feels more open to the world. I’ve grown a lot as a person,” he says. “Although really, I don’t think I’ve [ever] stopped growing.”

For Tamino Moharam Fouad, music is woven into his very identity. The Belgian-Egyptian singer, better known as Tamino, was named by his opera-loving mother after the hero of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, while his surname comes from his grandfather, the legendary Arabic singer nicknamed “The Sound of the Nile.” Yet with his debut album, Amir, Tamino has crafted a sound all his own. Punctuated by traditional Arabic strings and sparse, languid beats, his voice, which has drawn comparisons to Jeff Buckley, seamlessly drifts between honeyed falsetto and deep baritone. Taking a break to recline on a sofa during a recent shoot, Tamino is wearing an Ann Demeulemeester ensemble one might assume was part of the shoot’s wardrobe. Not so. As an Antwerp native, Tamino has a keen eye for style; he namechecks cult designers Jan-Jan van Essche and Cedric Jacquemyn as favorites, not to mention Demeulemeester’s Sébastien Meunier, who serviced the outfit Tamino is rocking on set before changing into a look by Chinese up and-comer Xander Zhou.

In many ways, Tamino is an ideal fashion muse: with thick brows and deep brown eyes, his striking appearance lends him the airs of a mournful matinée idol. But even if his music and facial features reflect the melancholy that informs much of Egyptian music, Tamino is remarkably affable. He is looking forward to a gig later that evening in London, and his upcoming collaboration with Nagham Zikrayat, a traditional Arabic orchestra made up of refugees from countries like Iraq and Syria. “Even though I love those antiheroes like Serge Gainsbourg or Tom Waits, I think Arabic music has a very different, more majestic sadness—the singer always has a straight back,” he says. “There’s a sense of pride that I think is just as important as the melancholy.”

Photography by Charlotte Hadden

Fashion by Dogukan Nesanir

Text by Liam Hess