It’s out! Sharp Minds, Raised Fists is now available on Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, and all the usual places you get your music. Thanks so much to everyone who has bought, downloaded or streamed it so far. I’ll be announcing some more live dates soon, but in the mean time here is a round up of the press coverage of the album release.

Get in Her Ears said “it sounds great; a real triumph of song-writing, performance and production. But more than that… it could soundtrack a movement.”

Naz and Ella said “it’s the perfect balance between hard-hitting vocals and catchy hooks. The songs will make you sigh, nod, get angry and sometimes even laugh but you’ll want to hit repeat when it’s over.”

Loud Women said it was “bright and brash, filled with songs that any of our top tunesmiths would be proud to put their names under the titles of.”

Left Bank Magazine put Post-Patriarchy Disco on their weekly playlist, calling it “a feminist anthem that is strong in its lyrics and also undeniably dancey.”

I also did a little interview with She Makes Music about the album and musical and lyrical influences behind it.

Tracks from the album have been played on The Other Woman radio show on Soho Radio, on Get in Her Ears on Hoxton Radio, on Grrls Like Us podcast, on Breakfast King’s weekly mixtape, on Brutha Voodoo’s Playlist Obscura on SHMUfm, and on Views From the Edge on North Highland Radio.

As always, the best way to support my music making is to order the album from my Bandcamp store on CD or download, where you can also get it with a bundle of CDs and badges.

I’ll be playing another full band show for Get in Her Ears on 13 March 2020 with Ghost Car, The Other Ones and Minimals, but watch this space for more live dates to be announced very soon!

Well it’s been a long time since I posted an update on here (does anyone read band websites anymore? Everything is on social media…), which means there’s loads to update you on.

First, my new album! It’s been three years since the Pillow Fort EP and in that time I’ve been working hard on writing and recording. Whereas my first album, Connections/Departures, was partly co-produced with A Scholar and A Physician, this one has been entirely produced by me. That is, as well as writing all the lyrics and music, I programmed all the drum tracks, synths, etc., played most of the guitar parts (on a couple of tracks I told other people what to play) and decided how it should all sound together. Like before, I mixed the tracks with Oli Horton at Dreamtrak Studio, but this time round the mixes were much closer to finished when I brought them in. As a result, this album feels more my own – I got to exercise my control freak tendencies and develop my skills as a producer. I’m really proud of the result.

The album is called Sharp Minds, Raised Fists, and it will be out on 11 October on CD and download – in fact you can already pre-order it on Bandcamp. It features the singles you’ve already heard – They Cut, We Bleed and Terminal 4 – as well as Post-Patriarchy Disco, which you’ve no doubt seen me posting about for the last few months as I was crowdsourcing footage for the video, which you can now watch below. It features some heroes of DIY feminist music, including Petrol Girls, Miss Eaves and I, Doris, as well as a large banner constructed out of bedsheets, emulsion, washing line poles and bamboo.

To celebrate the video release I have also put some liberation disco-themed stickers and badges on my Bandcamp page, which you can check out here.

I will post more about the album in the coming weeks, including writing a bit about the themes it addresses and what inspired each song. In the meantime, I’m rehearsing for LOUD WOMEN Fest, which I’m playing for the second time this year on 14 September. I’ve had a long break from playing live, largely for health reasons but also to focus on recording the album. Now I’m back and with a new line-up! Two guitarists, Kim and Georgia, will be joining me on stage for the first time. There is an incredible line up of 20 female and non-binary -led bands and artists playing throughout the day, and the Fest will also be your first opportunity to get yours hands on copies of Sharp Minds, Raised Fists. You can check out the line-up and get your tickets here.

Much love and thanks to everyone who follows my music, it really means a lot. I’m really happy with the direction things are going and I feel like more good things are in store. x

My new single ‘They Cut We Bleed’ debuts at LOUD WOMEN today! This one has been a reeeeally long time in the making – one way or another there have been a lot of people involved, but I’m super excited to finally share it with you. It will be released across all platforms on 1 December, but you can get it now from my Bandcamp store.

Some of you might recognise the title as a slogan used by feminist direct action group Sisters Uncut, who campaign against life-threatening cuts to services for survivors of domestic violence. In the UK, two women a week are killed by a partner or ex-partner, but the government is cutting funding for refuges, legal aid, social housing – all services that survivors rely on. Across the country, the first services to shut down have been those set up for women of colour and LGTBQ+ survivors, while many migrant survivors are denied the right to access refuges at all. This is a matter of life or death. Theresa May has made a show of being tough on domestic violence, but is taking away lifelines for people trying to escape it.

The track was recorded last year, using samples from a protest where Sisters Uncut took over an empty council flat in Hackney to highlight the lack of safe accommodation for survivors in the borough. They reclaimed the flat for nine whole weeks, and I did some of the editing of the track in the flat – a space for women and non-binary people only where Sisters Uncut ran workshops and events, ran a ‘solidarity not charity’ kitchen and made breakfast for local kids. All proceeds from sales of the single will go to Sisters Uncut.

The video might just be my favourite one I’ve done yet, with footage from Sisters Uncut actions over the past two years, from the storming of the red carpet at the Leicester Square premier of the film Suffragette in 2015 to Sisters taking over the visitors’ centre of Holloway Prison earlier this year to run a community festival there. I’m super grateful to all of the sisters and siblings who gave me their footage, and those who gave me permission to use their voices and faces for this project.

In the wake of #metoo, the Harvey Weinstein scandal and many other disclosures of sexual harassment and assault committed by men in the entertainment industry, media, politics and basically everywhere, journalists have been asking female celebrities whether they, too, have experienced gendered abuse and violence. Some reporters are even acting as though survivors somehow owe them their stories.

While the current level of publicity around this is new, the practice of expecting women to recite experiences of sexism for public consumption is not, and it’s one female bands and artists are familiar with. “Have you ever experienced sexism in the music industry?” has become almost a standard questions to female musicians in interviews, not to mention the many requests from editors to provide a quote or even write a piece about it for their publication.

I wrote a piece for LOUD WOMEN about questions journalists should ask themselves before they ask women to share their stories of sexism in the music industry. Read the full piece here.

General purpose reaction jpeg, can be used in a wide variety of online conversations. #feminism #patriarchy #fuckyou #bullshit #metoo #everydaysexism #roses #flowers #digitalart #drawing #illustration

A post shared by Hannah Lucy (@gaptooth.music) on Oct 20, 2017 at 2:53pm PDT

‘Terminal 4’, the first single from my second album, premiered on Loud Women today! It will be released digitally on 19 May, available from all the usual places.

I liked the idea that we’re continually making a personal map of our emotional lives, and that specific places have the power to take us back in time, whether we like it or not. The song was inspired by going back to places that have strong feelings attached to them, like the house I grew up in, and visits to Oxford and Bristol where I used to live. It’s about the idea that as we move through the world we give meaning to the places where we make important memories – even mundane places like street corners and train stations.

I’ve been wanting to make an animated video for a while, partly because I’m not that keen on being on film, but also because I love animation. This single felt like a good time to give it a go, so I asked Horrorize Studio to make one for me, and it came out great: you can watch it here.

The full version of the song features an extended outro to shake your ass to – have a listen below. Singles are supposed to be three minutes long, not closer to six, but I think this version is way better. So I figured, fuck it, it’s not like it’s going to be on Radio 1 anyway, I may as well release the version I like best. The B-side is a cover of 100,000 Fireflies by The Magnetic Fields, which I recorded a year or two ago, and the artwork features one of my drawings.

Meanwhile, my new album is about half completed (yes, most artists finish their albums before picking singles but I’m impatient and I don’t like leaving long gaps between releases). I’ve got five songs recorded and a bunch more half-recorded. I hope to have news about more single releases very soon, and will post again shortly about live dates over the summer.

Sisters Uncut outside Holloway Prison protesting against deaths of women in prison and institutional sexism and racism. #sistersuncut #protest #feminism #digitalart #digitalpainting #procreateapp #procreate

A post shared by Hannah Lucy (@gaptooth.music) on Feb 18, 2017 at 4:58am PST

As you may have noticed, I’ve been a little bit quiet lately on the music front, for two reasons.

One is that I’ve been working on my second album (title TBC!), which is coming along slowly but surely – about half of it is finished, with the other half in various stages of completion. I will be making an announcement very soon about my next single, which is due out in the next few months – I have a great animated video by Horrorize Studios which I can’t wait to share with you. More news on this soon, as well as festival dates for the summer.

The second reason is because I’ve been busy getting back into visual art, which is an old hobby of mine but one which I’ve neglected for quite a few years because the technology at my disposal didn’t quite match what I wanted to do. But lo! I was given a stylus pen for my birthday in January, and since then I’ve been madly practising my drawing skillz. You can see what I’ve been up to on my Instagram account. I’ll be drawing the artwork for my upcoming releases, and I did some illustrations for Loud Women Fest as well. Yay!

Finally managed a decent one of myself. #digitalart #illustration #procreate #procreateapp (no, my hair is not that purple IRL)

A post shared by Hannah Lucy (@gaptooth.music) on Mar 25, 2017 at 2:42am PDT

The Pillow Fort EP is out!

Release day! Nadia is ecstatic. pic.twitter.com/m328JqJxzD

— Gaptooth (@gaptoothmusic) March 4, 2016

It has had some great press coverage so far – ‘Stay Away From Me’ was played on BBC Introducing on 6Music, as well as featuring on Brutha Voodoo’s Playlist Obscura and on The Devil Has the Best Tuna blog’s fresh sounds.

There was a lovely review of the EP on The Flux Presents and another on The Electricity Club. The Von Pip Musical Express featured ‘Good Guys’ as its Track of the Day, and it was also played on Grrrl Power Hour on Lucky Star Radio.

I did an interview for local blog East Blam, and wrote a piece for the awesome feminist collective TYCI about why I chose to write ‘Stay Away From Me’.

Thanks to everyone who has bought it, written about it or otherwise supported the EP – it means a lot to me.

I have also confirmed that I will be playing at the Matchwomen’s Festival on 2 July – a brilliant day celebrating women’s activism in East London. Advance tickets are £5 and are available here.

In the meantime I’m also working on new material – three new songs recorded in February, and more to come soon!

I’m super pleased to finally share with you the video for ‘Stay Away From Me’, which was filmed in Bristol on a cold day in October last year. It was directed by the awesome Laura Kidd, aka She Makes War, who spent the day walking backwards through the streets of Bristol to film me singing, while passersby looked on with befuddlement.

It is, of course, taken from the Pillow Fort EP, which is now available for pre-order on iTunes, Amazon and Bandcamp.

You can also order the CD from Bandcamp up until 4 March, after which time the online shop will be shut until 21 March as I will be overseas and unable to stuff things in Jiffy bags and post them to you. If you order the EP and the Connections/Departures album together you can save a whole pound!

You can now also listen to the full EP on Soundcloud:

I can finally announce that my new release – the Pillow Fort EP – will be released on CD and digital download on 4 March 2016. In fact, you can already pre-order the download and/or the CD from Bandcamp, and get two tracks straight away.

CDs are here! pic.twitter.com/C8YOzgF6lg

— Gaptooth (@gaptoothmusic) January 19, 2016

It will include four new tracks recorded last summer, most of which I wrote in my head in 2013/14 whilst house hunting, taking the tube back and forth from Bow to East Ham. Although I’m working on a second album, I decided to release these four tracks together first, as they all hang together sonically (being electronic but also slightly more guitarry than most of my usual stuff). They also fit together thematically in a way, as they’re about approaching different aspects of every day life from a feminist perspective.

I posted the fourth track, I Built a Fort, on Soundcloud a few months back, and I’ve now also posted the first track, Stay Away From Me:

I’ve been really enjoying gigging again recently (having sometimes been a bit ambivalent about it in the past) and I’ll be playing more shows in 2016, as well getting in with recording the album. I’ll be posting new tracks, videos and other bits and pieces on Facebook and Twitter, which are the best ways to keep up with what I’m up to.

More news very very soon!

Hx