HONESTY
HONESTY emerged as an exercise in doing things differently. They thrive on collaboration, bringing in diverse voices and artists. Their ethos is built around self-expression and breaking boundaries—both sonically and visually.
HONESTY emerged as an exercise in doing things differently. They thrive on collaboration, bringing in diverse voices and artists. Their ethos is built around self-expression and breaking boundaries—both sonically and visually.
“Imagine you start a band tomorrow, the roadmap is laid out for you,” Matt Peel of Leeds-based outfit HONESTY observes. “There’s no thinking to be done.” Suffice to say, HONESTY do not consider themselves a band in the traditional sense. They wince at the term collective but will live with it. With influences that run the gamut from Mount Kimbie and My Bloody Valentine to Björk and Burial, HONESTY’s approach to electronic production and live collaboration has been described as genreless, but they’re not really into that either. Too bad. That’s what you get for breaking the mould. “Multi-disciplinary?” Matt smiles. “It’s like you’re going to start doing karate or something.”
With four core members – George Mitchell, Matt Peel, Josh Lewis and Imi Marston – and a rotating cast of collaborators, HONESTY emerged as an exercise in doing things differently. The project was born in 2020, initially as a remedy to Matt and Josh’s frustrations with the creative restrictions of their previous bands. Out went defined parts and play-by-numbers riffs, in came fluid roles and studio experimentation. Tapping up friend George Mitchell who Matt had worked with in Mitchell’s previous band Eagulls, they went on the hunt for vocalists. Step up Imi Marston, a guest-turned-resident who moved in over marathon track edits and late-night McDonalds sessions.
Based in Matt’s Leeds studio The Nave, HONESTY became friends through making music, hanging out their way to a sound that they still can’t put their collective fingers on. “That’s what scares me a little bit,” Matt reflects. “Each of the tunes has been birthed in a really different way, which is dead exciting, but sometimes it’s like, what if we wanted to do that again?” Fortunate then that no part of HONESTY is about doing the same thing twice.
Although they’re not Leeds natives, it’s clear the Yorkshire city’s resistance to being boxed has influenced their own. “Leeds has always been a weird melting pot of different music,” George explains. “You’ve got sound clash culture, you’ve got Back to Basics house music, and then Sisters of Mercy, goth and all the post-punk stuff that happened here. You can’t really put it down to one thing, and I guess we’re just a part of that.”
And while their sound may not be rinse-and-repeat, it’s also not feral. One analogy is that of passing the aux cable at a house party, but despite moments of euphoria the music is often darker and more introspective than would get you a gig as a DJ. Instead, they describe it like club music with song-structure, bringing in guest vocalists Liam Bailey, Kosi Tides, Liza Violet and Katie Drew on their debut album U R HERE to add an individual spark to each production. The glue, more often than not, is granular synthesis.
If you were to try and put a name to them, influences which lend a shade to HONESTY’s genreless palette are, in their words: Shoegarage, Rhythm n’ Shoegaze, and UK Shed. Unpack that and what you’re left with is something a little grainy, a little monochrome and a little subversive. “We’ll take a sound and then stretch it, process it into something else and then put it into the tune,” Josh explains. Ambient music is a reference, as is drum n bass, but just not like you’re used to hearing them. They’re into UNKLE and Massive Attack but not trip hop. Go figure.
The production cookery behind each HONESTY track is reflected in their collaboration with design studio *UNCANNY, who have created the artwork, music videos and visual identity of the group. “They’ll take a photo and Xerox it and project it and then photograph it, until you end up with something that’s been through all this processing,” Josh continues. Like the music, HONESTY’s visual aesthetic is hard to pin down – an intuitive flex of digital and analogue, found material and AI manipulation, a contemporary DIY attitude without the tired punk tropes.
Released on Partisan Records on 7 February 2025, U R HERE represents the culmination of three years of studio play and, although they’d cringe at the term, a degree of collective self-discovery.
The record begins with NO RIGHT 2 LOVE – a contemporary ballad for a fucked-up world with oblique references to the overturning of Roe vs. Wade in the USA, Black Lives Matter and social inequality. Voiced by Liam Bailey, whose poetic lyrics were cut and chopped and transformed in the studio, it’s a strident opener that swells into something like hope for the strength of human connection. “We are left in a struggle to give and receive the love we all have the right to have,” they suggest, leaving the rest to the listener.
“It’s like someone throws you a vibe, you interpret it, and then try to amplify it,” Matt explains. On MEASURE ME that vibe was about as wild as it gets, based on a dream that vocalist Liza Violet had in which she took out her brain to weigh it for emotion. Clipped, motorik drums drive up the tempo like a pressure valve released, pinning down Violet’s vulnerable, spirit-like vocal takes. “Each track’s just got its own feeling, almost like you’re jumping into someone else’s body,” George explains.
On TORMENTOR, that someone else was Imi Marston, whose phonetic approach to lyric-writing was interpreted by the group and moulded into a tale of trapped torment at the hands of a deceitful partner. Like many of HONESTY’s tunes, the feeling defines the form – a pulsing fever-dream of crashing synths and phased vocals.
“Having the creative freedom to do whatever I felt the track needed forced me to push my vocals into places I’d never pushed it, and not have preconceived notions of what I should sound like,” Imi explains.
Individually and as a collective, HONESTY have found a way to break themselves down and rebuild into something new every time. Where they go from here is anyone’s guess.