INTRODUCING: Artio
A fresh generation of young adults have been stepping up to the plate to represent the rage of their peers. No voice is as articulate and visceral than Leeds-based ARTIO, channelling queer rage and highlighting trans oppression, their punchy alt rock anthems couldn’t be more needed. We caught up with vocalist Rae Brazill about the band’s utter dedication to music, their intense writing and constant urge to learn and grow.
With such a defined sound and style so early in the careers, ARTIO clearly aren’t a half-arsed project. Their debut record Babyface is crammed with dynamic, aggressive music that tells stories and light fires within the listeners. This is only achievable through their relentless dedication. “We’ll all just be sat on like kitchen chairs in this room, just like leaning over, this screen going, ‘this needs to go here, and this is here’,” Rae tells us. “We literally have sessions in which we’ll do a demo on like a scratch vocal, then we’ll get every song to the same level. Other times, we’ll do detailed days, where we literally sit here and fine tune and comp and change tracks, overdub stuff and redo stuff. We’ll be in here for like, twelve hours. So we do spend a lot of time on our music, because for us is the most important thing. We love performing live and we love like making visuals and music videos and all that stuff. But the most important thing for us is that the songs are right, because the songs are gonna last forever, hopefully, so we torture ourselves to get this right.”
This is the sort of obsessive nature of true born artists. Not only do they have a lot to say about the state of the world, but they’ve been on a trajectory to making great music their entire lives.
“It’s just everything to us,” Rae agrees. “We’re all twenty-one, twenty-two. We’ve all been in bands since we were like fourteen, and we’ve been doing music since we were kids; we’ve all worked our instruments and just worked on our craft.”
“When we started out [as ARTIO], we started really honing ourselves and like feeling like musicians, and not just people that like played instruments. Because I think there’s a really big distinction there. I think we all feel very confident in our ability, but it’s because we’re constantly learning and finding new things that we really want to like get good at. Like, I’m learning different styles of like vocal performance, like some fry screams for the album, that I’d never learned before. As humans we’re always looking for new ways to get better. We’re very confident in what we do, but we know that like you can never learn enough. So, every time we release something we feel that we’ve stepped up, because we’ve learned and we’ve grown.”
ARTIO’s debut Babyface had been highly anticipated and their fans were super engaged in the single and the lead up to the release. “Yeah, they were having listening parties online, it was really sweet,” Rae smiles, “all giving amazing support. It was really nice; we’re really pleased with the response and how people have supported us. I love how people resonate with it, it’s really special.”
Anathematic, powerful songs are what ARTIO do best. Their charismatic performances and understanding of exactly how to say what needs saying means that every song has a huge sound and impact, both in the studio and live. “When we wrote like Temple like we were like, ‘this is gonna pop off live’. And Your Set My House on Fire is anthemic and fun and like you can jump about to it. We write songs with the intention of writing a song, obviously, but then also with the afterthought of like, and how is this going to be performed live? So, we do have the live energies being thought about whilst we’re writing.”
Rae and their bandmates are barely able to stop, their drive and passion for the music they make is hard to switch off. Even after top surgery, Rae was still tapped into keeping up with the bands dedicated listeners and making sure the next wave of music was ready to go out. “I woke up and sent a text to everybody saying ‘I’m fine [..] feel great. I mean, I felt awful, but I great’.” They laugh, “And then I was like, ‘Cool, now post a Reel and a TikTok. Because it was the teaser for the Head In the Sand video. Then was like, ‘oh, I should probably reply to some comments on that’. And then went back to sleep. Just off my face on painkillers in a medical in a bed.”
Between writing, recording and producing music, the band also do all their own art work and merch. It’s a huge undertaking, but ARTIO take it as a given to achieve exactly where they want achieve without compromise. “I don’t realise how big it is,” Rae nods, “I will chat to someone, I’ll list off the things we’ve done and they’ve be like, fuckin’ hell! – apparently, it’s a lot! But you know, if you want to be a fully creatively controlled project, then creating needs to happen.”
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