If your New Year’s resolution is to incorporate more whimsy into your life click play on slif slaf slof. Mermaid Chunky are set to dominate the seven seas in 2025. In 2024, the duo plunged self-proclaimed music enthusiasts into an absurd, enchanting world far removed from the norms of their hometown of Stroud. This project, the brainchild of art school friends Freya Tate and Moina Moin, took the music world by storm with the release of their debut album, slif slaf slof — a playful take on the religiously quoted phrase live, laugh, love.
Bizarre, kitsch, and utterly captivating, Mermaid Chunky are a true audiovisual oddity. Imagine giving a synth to a Celt, and you’re partway there. Their surreal sound combines reverberating chants, gurgling soundscapes, and musings on moss and swamps. It’s an utterly unique soup, an alchemy of ingredients that results in something surprisingly moreish.
If avant-garde country bumpkin were a genre, Mermaid Chunky would perfectly fit the bill. Their debut album has shattered genre boundaries, weaving something absurdly original. Their 2024 breakout year saw slif slaf slof on countless Album of the Year shortlists, and for good reason. Their eclectic storm of electro, jazz, experimental pop, and folk results in something that feels akin to a muddy woodland walk, meandering into ethereal tales with a distinctly English sense of twee. Heavy beats, ethereal saxophone, and whimsical charm combine in a way that feels entirely extraordinary in an age of homogeny.
With sonic influences ranging from Bagpuss to Kate Bush, Mermaid Chunky have melded a world unlike any other. Yet, their live performances take their whimsy to the next level. Elaborate handmade avant-craft costumes, unpredictable interactions with each other, and absurd instruments — think toy dogs and chattering teeth — make them an unmissable spectacle. After a whirlwind summer of festival performances, their infectious energy and humour have cemented them as a must-see act.
Betwixt their busy schedules, we had the chance to sit down with the weird and wonderful brains behind Mermaid Chunky. From the unexpected influence of Weetabix to the significance of a ball of yarn in the band’s early days, the duo unravel their world of creative chaos.
Congratulations on such a triumphant year! With the release of slif slaf slof and a string of phenomenal festival performances, how are you feeling about everything? What have been your favourite moments of the year?
Moina: I am loving watching slif slaf slof slide around. It feels pretty out of control, which is a familiar Mermaid Chunky state. I love this mysterious gap between us and the song recordings; how the songs have cloned themselves into people's lives and are breeding and encouraging people to do stuff, like looking someone in the eye or stripping, or crying, or sleeping, or emailing, or sweating! My favourite moment so far was coming across a group of people in aprons and lace, doing our chaperone dance-routine to no music in a big empty field late at night in front of the main stage at Green Man. I was like, wow, people are so confident and they know just what to do, their dancing is so effortless and beautiful. I was really far away so it made the whole thing feel very hazy and nostalgic — their dancing went on for ages.
Having poured so much of yourselves into the project and worked so incredibly hard on the album, how was the recording process for you?
Freya: We recorded the album in Somerset at Black Chapel with Joe Jones, who was recommended to us by Dry Cleaning. We were there as one of the first bands to try out the building as a studio. It was around March and there were lots of cute frosty lambs and frozen dog poo everywhere.
Moina: The night we arrived it was snowing! That was very ominous. We kind of locked ourselves inside this chapel for a week and fell into this all-day, all-night recording situation.
Freya: We also ate about two pounds of Bombay-mix.
Moina: Because the chapel was in its original chapel-y state, it added so much to the tracks. You can hear the rain on the roof and the old harmonium in sad nun. We also used the confession booth to record the chaperone vocals which felt blasphemous! All the recordings were live improvisations and then we overdubbed percussion, synths and vocals. The whole process was encouraged by watching lots of Joe Jones’ microscopic films of puddles, wearing more and more trousers and boiling many eggs. Joe was incredible, he was so into everything and never tried to tidy anything up.
Also, the guy who owned this Chapel made us this wholesome red stew and when we started asking him about the ingredients, Freya keenly observed that he had the same diet as Bear Grylls who turned out to be a relative, so we learnt loads about Bear Grylls.
Moina: The night we arrived it was snowing! That was very ominous. We kind of locked ourselves inside this chapel for a week and fell into this all-day, all-night recording situation.
Freya: We also ate about two pounds of Bombay-mix.
Moina: Because the chapel was in its original chapel-y state, it added so much to the tracks. You can hear the rain on the roof and the old harmonium in sad nun. We also used the confession booth to record the chaperone vocals which felt blasphemous! All the recordings were live improvisations and then we overdubbed percussion, synths and vocals. The whole process was encouraged by watching lots of Joe Jones’ microscopic films of puddles, wearing more and more trousers and boiling many eggs. Joe was incredible, he was so into everything and never tried to tidy anything up.
Also, the guy who owned this Chapel made us this wholesome red stew and when we started asking him about the ingredients, Freya keenly observed that he had the same diet as Bear Grylls who turned out to be a relative, so we learnt loads about Bear Grylls.
Can you tell us a bit about how Mermaid Chunky came to be? What were your first impressions of each other when you met? How did you develop such a unique sound, and who were your main sonic influences?
Moina: When we were growing up in Stroud, Freya would often come to club nights at SVA and her and her friends were always the most wild on the dancefloor, they just didn't care. They thrashed about in such an inspirational way and they all looked very learned. I was on the door with my little clipboard, I must have been about 14, and I remember Freya was wearing this tiny skirt that I had been intending to buy earlier that day from one of the very limited clothes shops in town. I think I said something like hey, my skirt! and pointed at her skirt. I don't think she heard me, but I felt we had had a connection because of the skirt.
Freya: A few years later Moina came down to Brighton while I was at Uni there to visit a friend, and we ended up hanging out all weekend. I remember my boyfriend at the time saying, “I feel like I really get Moina’s weird sense of humour”, and I was thinking, I get it more. And then I started a band with her to prove the point.
Moina: The music started happening as soon as we met, I guess. A lot of weird sounds and vocal exclamations turned into spur-of-the-moment melodies. When Freya came back to Stroud from Uni, we were hanging out in small cottages a lot and there was lots of stuff all over the place like heavy toy rabbits, wind-up toys and charity shop drum machines. They were all so dusty and perfect. We felt ready to start doing shows even before we had any songs to play, which I think is an ethos we have stuck with and has definitely shaped our sound.
I’d say some of our sonic influences are The Herbs, Roobarb and Custard, Bagpuss, John Shuttleworth, Ivor Cutler, Kid Carpet, Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, Mulatu Astatke, Kate Bush, Meredith Monk, Bach, William Onyeabor. Also, I have three little sisters so listening to Radio 1Xtra and eating Weetabix every morning has had a big effect on me.
Freya: A few years later Moina came down to Brighton while I was at Uni there to visit a friend, and we ended up hanging out all weekend. I remember my boyfriend at the time saying, “I feel like I really get Moina’s weird sense of humour”, and I was thinking, I get it more. And then I started a band with her to prove the point.
Moina: The music started happening as soon as we met, I guess. A lot of weird sounds and vocal exclamations turned into spur-of-the-moment melodies. When Freya came back to Stroud from Uni, we were hanging out in small cottages a lot and there was lots of stuff all over the place like heavy toy rabbits, wind-up toys and charity shop drum machines. They were all so dusty and perfect. We felt ready to start doing shows even before we had any songs to play, which I think is an ethos we have stuck with and has definitely shaped our sound.
I’d say some of our sonic influences are The Herbs, Roobarb and Custard, Bagpuss, John Shuttleworth, Ivor Cutler, Kid Carpet, Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, Mulatu Astatke, Kate Bush, Meredith Monk, Bach, William Onyeabor. Also, I have three little sisters so listening to Radio 1Xtra and eating Weetabix every morning has had a big effect on me.
The album feels like a collection of surrealist fairy tales, with each track exploring a different narrative. What’s your typical lyric-writing process?
Freya: Sometimes we’ll just be messing around together in a car or a tent with stupid jokes and voices, then we just kind of push each other to make it more disturbing. A lot of the lyrics or like the vibe of the lyrics and characters get made up that way.
There’s an incredible sense of play in your sound. Mermaid Chunky feels like its own unique world, where synths, saxophones, and seismic chants coexist effortlessly. Can you tell me more about how you developed your sound? What inspired you to experiment with so many different elements?
Freya: Moina and I have been playing together for quite a long time. Messing around in the soup of quite a quiet town in the early days. It felt like we could just do whatever we wanted. The small shows we did gave us confidence to splurge out further in the same direction. Because all our live shows are halfway improvised , everything’s open all the time, even in rehearsals. So, I think it makes the songs get better faster, and reach their ultimate stage, because they don’t get stuck and you don’t get bored that way.
Moina is more self-taught and I was lucky enough to have classical training when I was younger, but had to stop playing piano for about seven years after university due to an injury and what I realise now was a stress related pain cycle. That's where the loop pedal was introduced because you only have to play things once or twice and let it get repeated over and over.
I also feel like the early stages of the band were a bit of a reaction to that pain and loss for me, and an expression of the emotions that went with that, but also there was a lot of excitement because it was cool to be doing our own thing and be as chaotic as we wanted. Living back home with my parents after Uni made that even more frantic and desperate. I remember a local musician who wasn’t a fan said that he thought our music was the sound of madness. It kind of was. Stroud Valleys Artspace provided the space for us to do our thing at quite a young age which was really important.
Moina is more self-taught and I was lucky enough to have classical training when I was younger, but had to stop playing piano for about seven years after university due to an injury and what I realise now was a stress related pain cycle. That's where the loop pedal was introduced because you only have to play things once or twice and let it get repeated over and over.
I also feel like the early stages of the band were a bit of a reaction to that pain and loss for me, and an expression of the emotions that went with that, but also there was a lot of excitement because it was cool to be doing our own thing and be as chaotic as we wanted. Living back home with my parents after Uni made that even more frantic and desperate. I remember a local musician who wasn’t a fan said that he thought our music was the sound of madness. It kind of was. Stroud Valleys Artspace provided the space for us to do our thing at quite a young age which was really important.
To someone who hasn’t heard the album yet, how would you sum it up in three words?
At the risk of sounding facetious, I feel like it’s hard to top the three word that make up the album title slif slaf slof, which is a derivative of Live, Laugh, Love, but with more slugs.
You’ve often been described as an “audiovisual duo.” How do you feel about that label? How have you developed such a specific sense of visual identity in your live shows? Is it something innate, or do you draw inspiration from particular references?
Moina: It's taken a while to persuade some people that the visual parts of our project are just as integral as the sounds and one wouldn't work without the other. Music making can be totally intertwined by the way you roll around the room in a burlap sack. We have improvised lots of sound to film and that has been a big part of how some of our tracks have come to be. The visual identity of our live shows has benefited from 8 years of making a frantic wardrobe of costumes and films for all our parties like our frog parades and sexy cleaning solstice parties and tiny dog weddings etc. All these parties have had loads of visual art collaborators involved so they have all been incredibly inspiring. When we do a big show, we are wanting to represent the whole of the Mermaid Chunky family (e.g. Vomiton, Verity Monroe, Rowan Kelly, Milligan Beaumont, Kate Merry, Alex Merry, Jussara Nazaré, Cas Olowoyo, CloMoves, Paulina Lenoir) the list is endless.
Style and dressing up seem integral to your practice. You have such impressive stage costumes and work with incredible emerging visual artists like Daisy Tortuga and Rabbit. What motivated you to make costume design a focal point of your performances?
Moina: When me and Freya started playing together, we had this innate aim to camouflage our outfits into the music which involved wearing Microsoft paint and too many layers in all the wrong places. We got really into getting big groups of friends together and making all these costumes for our parties and solstice escapades on neolithic burial grounds. Once Freya sewed right through her finger when grappling with loads of lambswool but she was in such a creative frenzy that she just continued sewing to get the costumes done before sunrise. Costumes can really exaggerate your movements and emotions on stage which means you don't really have to oversell yourself because your costume is saying what you need it to say, it feels like you're performing with extra beings swaying round your body — very sexy, very emotional.
Considering your name is derived from a niche — and now sadly discontinued — type of yarn, what would your ideal winter jumper be made from, and what would it look like?
Freya: If the Mermaid Chunky wool is discontinued, that is pretty sad. But it might be good for us because there's been a violent competition between us and them on Google search for the last eight years.
An ideal jumper would be made from friendly rabbits that are still alive and happy to be working.
An ideal jumper would be made from friendly rabbits that are still alive and happy to be working.
You’ve collaborated with the electronic folk project Orbury Common in the past. Who would you love to collaborate with next?
Freya: We would really like Jennifer Coolidge to come and do some vocals on a chaperone remix for us.
Also Rhianna, the “sex with me so amazing” lyric is one of the best ever written.
Also Rhianna, the “sex with me so amazing” lyric is one of the best ever written.
Finally, what are your plans for 2025? Should we prepare for Mermaid Chunky world domination?
Freya: Yes! World domination sounds great. Mostly we’ve just been focusing on dominating England’s Canal systems and the Vole Kingdom. But do you have an email or someone we can contact about that?
