My Inspiration: Crimewave – Scenes

Photo by Leon Patrick

Originally from Whitley Bay and now based in Manchester, Jake Wilkinson, aka Crimewave, makes his debut on NYC’s Fool’s Gold Records after a busy 2024 supporting Kim Gordon, George Clanton and Machinedrum. Blending distorted guitars with fast-paced electronics, he sits at the edge of Manchester’s underground, crafting a shoegazey wall-of-sound built for the club.

Latest album SCENES plays as a conceptual dance record rooted in Northern nightlife, with a focus on the low-level criminality that slips through these spaces. Mastered by Rainy Miller and conceived as a continuous DJ set, it moves seamlessly—fuzzed-up, glitched-out guitars, strobing synths and sharp, fractured breaks burst from the speaker and capture both the euphoria of the dance floor and the unease beneath it.

Here, Jake tells us more about the inspirations behind the album…

SCENES is an album about northern nightlife and clubbing. My main aim was to convey both the euphoria of the dance floor and the half-seen acts of criminality lurking in the club’s more grimy corners.

On a sonic level, the album itself was intentionally conceived as a continuous DJ set, in homage to these nights out. Once the songs were finished, I re-recorded the entire album as a continuous mix, using DJ decks to loop breaks and blend one track into the next. The short 20-30 second interludes scattered throughout the album, are each titled after the BPM shift between songs, mirroring the transitions of a DJ set. Even the 40-second opener of the album, ID, I titled as a nod to the unreleased tracks DJs slip into their sets – its placement at the very start of the record a deliberate reference, since ID is the first thing needed before stepping inside the club.

Lyrically I wanted each track to describe a different moment within the club and the various misdemeanours that can be encountered. ‘Haemoglobin’ is about unnecessary bouncer brutality, ‘White Label’ is about someone’s phone being stolen on the dance floor, and ’Semaphore’ is about the visual signals of being in a nightclub you feel like you don’t belong in. Near the back end of the record I really wanted the lyrics to focus a bit more on something I feel is unfortunately more prevalent in Northern nightclubs, getting harassed by strangers for wearing different clothing. I love the North, and have lived in it my entire life, but there’s a lot of hostility when it comes to wearing clothes that make you look different.

Despite this focus on club culture and dance music, there’s not a synth to be heard on the record. All the sounds I use are just heavily manipulated guitars processed through the latest technologies. I’m an electronic music producer first and foremost, but I’m just using guitars instead of synths. My aim is to explore the idea of turning the guitar, a traditional rock instrument, into something that can be used in dance music. Across the album, I’ve intentionally processed the shoegaze wall of sound into shards of audio, stretching it out of shape, and moulding it into various maelstroms of club-ready beats.