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Linsey Teggert talks to Newcastle’s TV Death about creating explosive psych rock with a social conscience
Image: TV Death by Rhiannon Banks
TV Death frontman Jack Burlinson has just returned from Glastonbury Festival and he’s feeling somewhat fragile. Neil Young was a personal highlight and he hopes that in a few years he can “return to Glastonbury without having to pay.” One can assume he means to play on stage with TV Death, not to hop the fence, and it’s not a big stretch of the imagination to imagine this is entirely possible, given the reputation the North East three-piece are quickly garnering with their incendiary brand of psych rock and fervent live performances.
The band started out under the name Radio Silence, with drummer Andrew McAskell and bass player Robert Owens having known each other for many years. They found Jack via anadvert online and despite him being a complete stranger, the chemistry was apparent. “We liked all the same music, we started going to gigs together and that’s how we connected,” Jack recalls thoughtfully, though Andrew quickly interjects: “We just went on the pints for a few months, didn’t we?”
It turns out Radio Silence is already used by tonnes of bands, including “a Ukrainian drill DJ who attached all his songs to our Spotify” explains Andrew, so Radio Silence became the not too dissimilar TV Death. Andrew and Robert weren’t aiming to go down the psych road, citing a more post-punk sound, but Jack brought a bunch of demos to the table that had more of a surfy, vintage garage rock angle, including an older version of the jittery Crank Bugs that appears on their upcoming album, Neon Dreamland.
Before Neon Dreamland, the band released two EPs in the form of 2021’s Isolation and 2023’s The God, The One And The Devil, the latter being accompanied by a phenomenal run of schlocky B-movie horror-inspired videos for every song, which when combined form a mini-horror movie. If you haven’t seen these, you seriously need to give them a watch; they’re an incredible feat for a band who were still essentially brand new, the campy horror aesthetic perfectly matching their off-kilter sound with Jack’s unholy, man-possessed screams.
Though TV Death worked with a film company to shoot, all aspects of production and editing were done by Jack himself, a big horror movie fan who studied media at university. While the video plans for Neon Dreamland aren’t quite as ambitious, those released for the singles so far are still a visual spectacle, reflecting the fever-dream quality of TV Death’s music. Propaganda plays on the video nasty trope, reinforcing the claustrophobic ‘Us vs. Them’ narrative, and Lease of Life sees a disillusioned office worker dreaming of a Wheel of Fortune type game before legging it out the building.
It would seem the ‘Neon Dreamland’ referenced by TV Death is more of a construct of escapism, given the hellscape of reality that they explore through their thought-provoking lyrics, providing commentary on a crumbling society. Would it be fair to say that, though not overtly, they were a political band? “It’s hard not to be,” sighs Jack. “At times I take things in and don’t even realise that’s what I’m referencing until later. Everything is influenced by or reflective of what is going on in the world.”
“What I like about our songs, is that people can take inference from them for whatever they would like to,” says Robert. “Yes, we’re inspired by the situation in Gaza, by our current government, by lockdowns – take Propaganda for example, that ‘Us vs. Them’ message, you can interpret that in many ways. But the songs are full of energy and dancey enough that you can also enjoy them at face value without needing to take meaning from them – youcan just have a boogie to them.”
“I like the idea that the whole world is crumbling but there’s joy within it,” adds Jack. “That we acknowledge what’s going on around us but we can still find happiness.”
TV Death have found there is a lot to be positive about in the North East, particularly their fellow musicians. “There are loads of bands we’ve met and gigged with where they might notinspire us in a musical way but certainly in terms of how they operate, and aiming to replicate their success,” explains Robert. “Obviously if we’re talking about North East success, Sam Fender is the elephant in the room that you can’t ignore – he’s exploded into the stratosphere now. A step down from that but still a step ahead of us are people like Pigsx7 and Melanie Baker – they’re doing the things we really want to be doing, pushing us to want to knock down the next door.”
In terms of advocacy, the band have had support from the likes of BBC Introducing and local music development agency Generator, who took them to Brighton to perform at their North East showcase at The Great Escape Festival.
“It’s a classic Northern thing to say, but the music industry is still so London-centric,” says Andrew. ‘Don’t get me wrong, we know people who have made it purely off their own back, but I don’t think there’s any shame in saying we’re happy to take any help we can get.” And of course, TV Death are happy to advocate for themselves, especially when it comes to their live show. “If we’re going to put out some kind of definitive, ‘let’s back ourselves’ statement, I would say live, energy-wise, we’re one of the best bands in the North East,” states Andrew.
“We pride ourselves on that, we’ve made a bit of a career of it now, especially with support slots where we only get half an hour,” says Robert. “We make a setlist based on how many songs we can fit into half an hour, where we’re literally not going to stop. Everyone is going to be exhausted by the time we finish, but at least people will be like ‘Jesus Christ, that was mint.’”
