Bingo Fury’s music is ruled by chance moments, as likely to feature the sound of breaking glass as a chord sequence. Taking cues from Captain Beefheart and Laurie Anderson, the 24-year-old Bristolian, real name Jack Ogborne, creates noir ballads characterised by their dissonance, his guttural baritone underscoring experimental orchestration and fragmented noise. There are competing horn sections, scrambled piano interludes, moments of static and droll lyrics. “This is a new kind of pain before you cross-stitch my soul,” he croons on Leather Sky. Latest single Mr Stark is a semi-improvised patchwork of skittish rhythms and laconic one-liners.
The convenience of a studio is not for Fury; he prefers more atmospheric locations. His 2022 debut EP, Mercy’s Cut, was recorded in the basement of a pub said to be a former hangman’s quarters, and he camped out in a church to make new album Bats Feet for a Widow. Having spent his childhood drumming in a church band, the singer-songwriter channelled lingering feelings of religious unease while absorbing the building’s acoustic textures, from the echoes bouncing off its high ceiling to the clatter of a falling crucifix in I’ll Be Mountains.
While capable of sweeping, misty-eyed romance, it’s his moments of discordance that best define Bingo Fury. His intention is to toy with the expectations of the listener, defamiliarising their idea of what a song might be. “I like the idea of making people sit with uncomfortable feelings that they might not usually sit with,” he told the Quietus. The result is off-kilter lounge music that could spiral into chaos at any moment.
Bats Feet for a Widow is out now via the state51 Conspiracy. Bingo Fury plays Folklore, Hoxton, London, on 18 April and the Jam Jar, Bristol, 20 April
