Photography by Bohdan Cap

When this cryptic post-punk quartet met, all of them were drummers. “I had to teach Tom how to play bass and Sophie to play samplers, because we couldn’t all play drums, although that was fun for a while,” deadpans frontman and guitarist Jack Barnett. His twin brother George got the drum kit and These New Puritans (note the Fall reference) were born out of a “shack” in Southend, as a successor to the twins’ various imaginary bands growing up. “It’s quite murky in Southend, there’s a lot of marshland, and we make quite murky music, so maybe that’s got something to do with our sound,” Jack suggests. The teenagers had barely released limited-edition EP Now Pluvial when overtures from Hedi Slimane saw them tasked with composing the score to a Dior Homme show last year, although they’re careful to point out that they’re not a band that worry too much about their outfits. Debut album Beat Pyramid, appropriately produced by Einstruzende Neubaten and Liars producer Gareth Jones, is a thirty-five-minute blast of brittle rhythms, punctuated by lyricist Jack’s esoteric literary references. A crossword puzzle of midnight musings on medieval numerology, melting ice caps, 16th-century magicians, terrorist cells, and doppelgangers, if you listen carefully you can hear samples of musket shots and knives clanking around in there too. Barely 20, Jack is currently producing various side projects but he’s “getting into dancehall”, which may just be a hint as to where These New Puritans are headed next.