Artist spotlight: Chinatown Slalom

Liverpool four-piece that specialises in funky hooks, with a band name that sounds like a wavy pub crawl through takeaway restaurants? Ten points if you wrote down Chinatown Slalom…

A brief blurb

Liam, Jake, Mikey and Ricky are onto a good thing — a unique, eccentric one at that — but a good one all the same. From a brief Google search, you’ll learn that these lads formed after just three days of knowing each other and exploring how rapping over samples and electronics sounded like a niche they wanted to tap into. And hey presto, it’s worked.

I first came across this quartet when I was familiarising myself with more Live at Leeds 2020 artists and, wow, I was hooked. Chopped and skewed harmonies meet oddly contorted synth-pop, and it sounds seamless and exciting. Plus, their Spotify reads ‘Everyone’s invited’, and you can’t say fairer than that.

Their debut, full-length album ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’ is so much more than a lexical nod to Chris Tarrant. It’s fast and it’s slow; it’s uptempo and it’s reflective; it’s objective and subjective at once. The vibrance of the alt-indie harmonies are oddly hypnotising, and I can safely say I’ve been drawn into the dramatic sounds these four chaps have produced. Bring on Live at Leeds!