TEAM MORALE

It seems the fashion now, among the younger crowd, is to ditch the guitars and the crusty but charming local who’ll put on your band for nothing and give you a pint on the house at the end in favour of bashing out tunes on their computer.

It’s understandable really; the cost is minimal, barely requiring any recording gear or fancy gizmos, making it easier to experiment and figure out your sound.

22 year old Kent duo, Team Morale, have a wealth of influences but previously felt uncomfortable settling with just one.

With their latest single, ‘Ubuntu’, it feels like they’ve thrown all their influences into one big melting pot and created an exciting, delicious musical stew.

What begins as something quite simple, with just the sample of a preacher’s sermon, a haunting bass line and upbeat trip-hop style beats grows as more and more is piled on.

Instead of collapsing under the weight of everything, from the spliced vocal samples to the dabke influence that brings to mind Four Tet’s recent work with Omar Souleyman, it all meshes together into something of a mission statement for Team Morale.

No longer afraid of figuring out what their sound is, they’re happy to just experiment and see what works; a bold statement of intent that will hopefully produce tunes as exciting and adventurous as ‘Ubuntu’.

Words by Chris Taylor

Tipped by Ed Jupp from 17 Seconds and Kier from The Monitors