INTRODUCING: Tokky Horror
In a 1999 BBC Newsnight interview with journalist Jeremy Paxman, pop star David Bowie said: “there is a breakdown between the artist and the audience, personified by the rave culture of the last few years, where the audience are at least as important as whoever is playing at the rave.” Fast forward to 2023, and Bowie‘s comments seem like he was predicting the future. The internet has broken down the barrier between artists and the audience. Now, fans can connect to their favourite musicians through various social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram. However, it also has meant that bands don’t even have to be the same town in order to start a band. This was certainly the case for TOKKY HORROR.
“It was a little bit of a project over lockdown to get started using software to create music instead of jamming with a band, which we couldn’t do because of the isolation,” producer Zee Divine explains. He goes on to explain how he met vocalist and founder Ava Akira at Reading Festival one year and the other members of the band through various music concerts. “I reached out to them, and since then, it’s kept going,” he says. The band formed together, despite being based all over England, such as Birkenhead, Leeds, and Manchester. They sent demos to each other over the internet, which inspired their own genre of ‘virtual hardcore’.
The band have the cult theatre show The Rocky Horror Show to thank for their name. Zee explains that whilst he was in former punk band QUEEN ZEE, “someone was trying to find ways to describe QUEEN ZEE, and they said: ‘it’s like Rocky Horror, but if it was from Toxteth, like TOKKY HORROR.’ I thought that was a really cool name, and I’m not from Liverpool, I’m from Birkenhead, so there’s a kind of rivalry,” he jokes. “So I thought it would be a little bit tongue-in-cheek to be from Birkenhead and using that name. I used it as a graffiti tag for a while, and also when I was doing art, so I was still using it when the band started.”
TOKKY HORROR might label themselves as ‘virtual hardcore’, but when listening to their two EPs, 2021’s I Found the Answers, Now I Want More and 2023’s Kappacore, there is a very strong dance element to their sound. They cover every sub-genre of dance music, from jungle to drum ‘n’ bass. “When I first started getting into music properly in my teens, I started going out into Manchester and going to loads of drum ‘n’ bass raves. I think I’ve always loved heavy guitar music, but I’ve also loved heavy dance music,” vocalist Mollie Rush explains.
As for why TOKKY HORROR fuse dance and hardcore together, she says, “they can be two separate worlds. When I spoke to Zee about starting this project, and us introducing heavy breakbeats and things like that, we sat down and listened to loads of jungle, drum ‘n’ bass, hardcore and gabba and stuff like that. It’s because Zee was really interested in stuff like THE PRODIGY and all that rave stuff. It’s simply a melding of those two worlds.”
The name Kappacore is certainly an interesting choice for an EP title. Ava explains that it is simply a fusion of the fact that they love repping the Kappa clothing on stage, with Mollie finding a bright yellow Kappa jacket on Depop for Christmas one year. She says it started as a joke that the band should wear matching jackets, but everyone ended up loving it. The core part of Kappacore are because the band are hardcore. The EP came about by being “the scraps on the plate”. The band say that their approach to making an EP is that there is no approach; they just write songs and throw five or so of them together. It’s a somewhat refreshing way of putting together an EP, as you know there’s no songs being left out. They do try to make the songs fit, but for songs such as Maxine, they had the instrumental of it back when they started in 2020, but they “played about with it”, and “there’s a lot of different time stamps of TOKKY‘s music.”
The EP has a lot of collaborators, which happened thanks to Instagram. “People just reach out on there and they’ll drop you a message if they’re interested in working with you,” Mollie explains. Zee also acknowledges how important social media is for upcoming bands. However, he also notes that it can be easy to get lost in the noise and to try and be an influencer, so the main focus is to concentrate on the music.
TOKKY HORROR‘s live shows are loud and rambunctious. Ava and Mollie frequently jump into the crowd, stirring up mosh pits and dancing with fans. “The reason why I love being in a band are the live shows,” Mollie explains. “I like interacting with people at shows. I like to know who’s in the crowd as I’ve been on both sides of the stage and the crowd. I just want to party. It’s so much fun.”
It is clear that the band have a deep love for their fans. The internet has allowed for the band to not only connect with fans, but also each other. The energy that they have on stage is kinetic, and the music is lively and fun. After the last few years spent in lockdown, it is time for TOKKY HORROR and their brand of virtual hardcore into reality.
Like TOKKY HORROR on Facebook.