Young Fathers: Wednesday, April 29

Is it hard to make music that truly sounds new in 2015? Because Alloysious Massaquoi, of Scottish trio Young Fathers, makes it seem gallingly easy: "It's just wanting to make something that you haven't heard before—it's as easy as that."

It's hard to argue with Massaquoi, whose band's genre-bending sound has been perplexing critics for years, drawing comparisons to everyone from the Beastie Boys to TV on the Radio. Its albums ebb from bass-driven rap tracks to soft and melodic synth pop to pulsing punk. The group's debut full-length, Dead, won the United Kingdom and Ireland's coveted Mercury Prize last year, an accolade that previously had been awarded to PJ Harvey, Alt-J and James Blake. But the endorsement has hardly affected the band, which has stayed in the studio producing powerful new projects. White Men Are Black Men Too arrived earlier this month, and finds the trio moving more confidently into a pop context. But even with this newfound attention, Massaquoi wants more. 

"We're very ambitious, you know. We want to be huge. We want to be worldwide," he says. "With the kind of music that we do, it's a long struggle. We're putting forward new ideas, new ways of thinking about music, or thinking about creating music."

Perhaps the key to the trio's far-reaching tendencies is its members' multicultural backgrounds. Massaquoi was born in Liberia before moving to Edinburgh. "G" Hastings is a Scottish native, and Kayus Bankole was also born in Scotland, to Nigerian parents, and lived in Maryland for a part of his childhood. From the beginning, the group has operated on a philosophy of fearlessness. Its first official release, 2012's Tape One EP, was produced in a visceral, seven-day recording session and made available the following week. That was far from its first project, though. The trio has been working together in a creative capacity since the members were 14—all three are now 27.

But with two full-length studio albums released in the last two years, Young Fathers is just now hitting its stride. Pushed to calculate the formula that makes up its eclectic sound, Massaquoi demurs. 

"I don't know how to answer that," he says. "You can say it's the weather. Or maybe it's the people you've met throughout your life. There is no way of gauging it. 

"It's not a process that's very in-depth. We listen to so much and you're exposed to so much at an early age. So when you get to point where you want to do stuff, make music and create, you're able to tap into those things."

He then relents slightly, admitting that the need to push musical boundaries is, more than anything else, driven by personal morality. "I want to make music so that, when I'm an old man, I can be able to sleep at night."

SEE IT: Young Fathers plays Holocene, 1001 SE Morrison St., with Mas Ysa and Hosannas, on Wednesday, April 29. 8:30 pm. $12 advance, $14 day of show. 21+.

WWeek 2015