Guides/A Riffiter guide
The Windmill scene: Britain's strangest rock boom
One Brixton pub stage produced black midi, Black Country, New Road and a new grammar for guitar music.
The Windmill scene is the wave of experimental British rock bands that emerged from the Windmill pub in Brixton, South London, in the late 2010s, black midi, Black Country, New Road, Squid, Shame and their orbit. This guide collects the eight records that define the scene.
A 150-capacity pub in Brixton with a dog on the roof became, between roughly 2017 and 2022, the most important stage in British guitar music. The bands that came through the Windmill shared no sound (sprechgesang post-punk, klezmer-inflected chamber rock, motorik funk) but they shared an audience, a booker and a total indifference to being normal.
Call it crank wave, call it post-Brexit new wave (the bands hate both); the records are what matter, and these eight are the spine.
- 1
Schlagenheim
★ 3.7 · 3The scene's shock arrival: four teenagers out of the BRIT School playing math-rock at the edge of collapse. Schlagenheim (2019) was nominated for the Mercury Prize within months of the band having a single press photo. The bar for musicianship in the scene was set here, absurdly high.
- 2
For the First Time
★ 3.6 · 4Seven players, klezmer horns, Isaac Wood narrating panic attacks in real time. For the first time (2021) announced the scene's most beloved band, six songs, already legendary from the live circuit before a note was released.
- 3
Ants From Up There
★ 4.3 · 14Released February 2022, four days after Isaac Wood announced his departure. The scene's masterpiece: chamber-rock songs about love and Concordes that fans treat the way an earlier internet treated In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. The comparison is now standard, and earned.
- 4
Bright Green Field
★ 3.8 · 3The danceable wing: Squid's 2021 debut runs motorik grooves and Ollie Judge's yelp through dystopian Britain. The Windmill sound at its most rhythmic, krautrock with a UK passport.
- 5
Songs of Praise
★ 4.5 · 1The scene's first breakout, in 2018, five South London kids raised literally in the Windmill's back room, playing post-punk with a grin and a snarl. The proof of concept that the pub could launch careers.
- 6
I Love You Jennifer B
★ 4.5 · 1Georgia Ellery (also of BC,NR) and Taylor Skye splicing songbook balladry with bass drops and glitch. I Love You Jennifer B (2022) is the scene's pop record, and the most inventive production of its year.
- 7
- 8
caroline by caroline (2022)
Eight musicians making music out of patience: Appalachian fiddle drones, choral swells, long silences. caroline's self-titled debut is the Windmill scene at its quietest and most extreme, the moment the wave ran past post-punk entirely.
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