Cold Court On The Philly Scene, Contemporary Theatre And Crafting A New Sound

On their explosive debut EP HANDS UP, the Philadelphia duo fuse noise rock, dance music, theatre, and collage-like production into something that feels both wildly familiar and entirely new.

There was a brief period when you could believe it, when Lou Reed talked about a girl just about nine years old whose life was saved by Rock’n Roll. That time in 2019 when London began to bubble over with bizarre hype bands smashing noise rock, post-rock, prog, and good old-fashioned post-punk into radically experimental and adventurous songs. It didn’t last forever, I mean, nothing does, but it ended quite quickly, all the same. Most of the acts shift tactics into more baroque territory. The generation they inspired doesn’t really inspire me much. Too many violins and saxophones. That’s not to say London isn’t still full of interesting bands forging new sounds with rockist tools, just look at the likes of Moin or Still House Plants. But that raw maximalism of the early days of Black Country, New Road, and Black Midi is missing. Sure, you can find it sporadically in bands, but more often, they just sound like their influences rather than following their vision.

Despite being from Philadelphia, Cold Courts, in their early lineup would’ve fit in well amongst the 2019 Windmill scene. While siblings Jojo and Mini have been making music together for years, that initial form of the band, who ended up opening for Black Midi in 2023, was formed when Jojo moved to college. “We were playing as this big eight-piece and just making no wave together.” Before that, it was the two siblings and their friend Toby; now they’ve formed into a live four-piece with the siblings as equal songwriters and producers.

Somehow, on their debut EP, \ (^_^) / (aka HANDS UP), they’re more maximalist than ever. It’s a lightning-in-a-bottle piece of work, combining a collage-like production style and shattering percussion with red-hot guitar licks that pierce through waves of distortion. The duo's vocals clip in and out, mixing scattered raps with full-throttle rock ballad bravado. Despite these shifts, the band Mini mentions still feels “super attached to Black Midi and Mars Volta. They're super fucking cool.” Though they acknowledge it doesn’t come through as much in their new sound. Where the band’s influences remains, as Jojo puts it, “I don’t think we were really actively listening to them during the process. But there’s still so much of that energy we love, especially in the way that we use guitars.”

The guitar remains a central point of Cold Courts' sound. Though distorted and refractured into a mix of blues licks and chiming notes. It's often the noisemaker, but the way that noise is used is near unparalleled. The duo's production style reconfigures their songs into uncanny things. While they cite the likes of “Justice, SebastiAn, J Dilla and Elsyia Crampton” as influences, those still feel distant from what they're doing. While it may be dancey and collage-like in equal measure, that only underpins half of the process.

“We knew we wanted to make recorded music,” says Mini, “But we had no idea what that was supposed to be, or what that was supposed to sound like. We actually talked about making two versions of the EP at one point, where one of them would be super live, super grimy and noisy. And then the other one would be completely dubstep.”

That didn’t quite come to pass and instead the resultant EP is, in Mini’s words, “kind of us just doing both at the same time.” Jojo notes a mild “dub influence” on the EP through ‘stripping back some of the recordings and performances and then reintroducing some stems as a collage. But it's still built off of that foundation of the drums, the live feel.’

This existence between studio and live, straddling between housey dance beats and proggy noise rock, is evident in their songwriting process as well.

“‘Nina’ was all written on an acoustic guitar. It was like that for months, until after the fourth time, we recorded it, JoJo just fucking completely remixed it, and put OTT on everything, completely redid the drums with these Lynn drum samples, added 808s and then that's pretty much the ‘Nina’ you hear now.”

Though just as often the process occurs in reverse, with ‘COLA,’ “it started as a fully house beat that Jojo made. Like, it sounded exactly like Justice. And then we jammed on top of it. There’s always a mixture of both.” That mixture in the songwriting process leaves Cold Court sounding unique. Not merely a band that’s thrown  a few synths or breakbeats over a noise rock track, or a pair of producers throwing some shredding in between beats. Rather Cold Court sounds closer to pop stars at points than anything else. For all the flash, what lies underneath the dancey rhythms, chopped up vocals and searing guitars is a collection of incredibly addictive songs. Ones where the siblings' exquisite writing chops and infectious confidence shine greater than any mere gimmicks.

That’s not to say the duo is always on the same page.  “I think we love a lot of the same things,” says Mini. “We definitely have very similar tastes. But, I think our reasoning for what we like could be opposite, honestly.” “It definitely really comes down to our tastes,” adds Jojo, “that's where I feel like we have our most disagreements. But then ultimately, those disagreements kind of help us meet at this, unimaginable middle ground between our tastes.”

An unimaginable middle ground between the two tastes is a pretty good description of the EP, though Jojo has one better:

“The EP is very much a representation of us learning to understand each other.” 

That sense of conversation feels like the main thread that runs through Cold Court’s music. The various ideas and sounds feel neither fully merged nor disparate from one another, but rather in dialogue. While many cross-genre politics can end up shifting things closer together to the point they verge on generic, every aspect of HANDS UP feels distinct enough that it bustles against the others, creating delightful sonic ricochets in the conversational clutter.

At points, the band's sound appears in conversation with things that stretch beyond their immediate. At points, that’s obvious, such as on ‘Nina’: “Nina Simone was what inspired ‘Nina,’ of course, that’s basically an interpolation of Sinnerman.” At others its less obvious things such as twelve bar blues; “A lot of Steve Ergon and Jimi Hendrix. Especially, that approach.” Interestingly, Mini cites theatre and the “theatric, things that don't take themselves too seriously, like, it's a show, y’know? Like, it's for the sake of art.”

As a strong influence on the duo's approach. She mentions two plays as particular influences on the EP, the first ‘Sunday In The Park With George’, which she describes as “having completely changed my life. It's like, the most beautiful work of art, I think, in the entire world, like, ever.” And ‘Red,’ which concerns “Mark Rothko. His idea that we killed Cubism and now pop art's come to kill us.” With both a focus on modernity, props up with Mini citing Sunday In The Parks score, which used; “Kurzweil's and synths and just crazy sounds with orchestras.” Resulting in “this weird modern thing. But it was so beautiful, I wanted to do that with the EP.” Whereas in ‘Red’ Rothko struggles against contemporary culture: “His art is not what's new, he's not cutting edge anymore and it’s just that experience of watching that happen.” From the play discussion, it becomes clear quickly that modernity is a keen concern of Cold Court’s. When asked, Jojo says,

“In the context of making rock music, I think there is a kind of responsibility to keep things really refreshing, really new.”

That sense of newness applies to the band's live setup as well. “We’ve tried over and over with so many set-ups,” says Jojo, “the latest one, as of yesterday, is a lot more stripped back.” Over time, the band's live sound has shifted from being an eight-piece with no electronics beyond pedalboards to various attempts at incorporating them into the mix. “There was a time when we had two samplers on stage, and we were playing every sound manually on the 404” says Mini. “And then there was a time where I was singing and playing clips and playing guitar at the same time, on the push.” But now the bands stripped down to a four-piece with others handling electronic duties, “Mini and I specifically wanted to make sure that we can really give the performance our all without really having to focus on tweaking things,” says Jojo, “so we could just play guitar, y’know?”

It’s a good thing then that through all the shifts in style and members, the band’s hometown of Philly has always proved an excellent soundboard. They describe their history as “Experimenting on the Philly audience, and, they kind of stuck with us. They let us do whatever we want and the scene is super supportive.” The scene itself remains still one of Cold Court’s biggest joys and inspirations, “they're not afraid to cry and scream and break stuff. And I think that's something that has been important for us to embrace and take in. Because breaking stuff and screaming and stuff like that is kind of how certain things have to get out.” 

When asked if there are any artists in the scene who deserve more attention, Cold Court are eager to shout out a variety of acts:

“Sodaseas, The Death of James Dean. They're not bands, but my friends Val, Valentine's Day, EmoRave, Sativa Too swag, they're some cool local Philly rappers we fuck with a lot. Avi is a cool-ass DJ. Shout out dead birds, the house venue. They're putting on amazing shows. Blurry is one of our friend Michael's, like, this goated, uh… I don't even know how to explain it. Crazy hardcore electronic, I don't want to call it hyperpop. It's like the curse word at this point. There's lots of super, really, really awesome music. But I'd say Valentine's Day. She's dropping an EP, I believe quite soon, and I think it's going to fuck the world up, I think it's a really beautiful project.”

Wrapping up, I ask the band what sounds they see themselves exploring in the future, and the answers slightly surprise. “A lot more minimal maybe?” suggests Mini,

“I don't know if we could do minimalism. Just like who we are as people, I don't know if we could let that happen, but I definitely want it to be a lot more mature, I think. I want it to sound more serious. We love music and we love sounds, and we love all this stuff, but we have something very specific that we want to say.”

What that specific thing is will most likely appear on the band's next project, as HANDS UP resembles more of a conversation than a straight argument. Through the siblings' dialogue, a new sonic language has emerged out of rock's carcass. A glimmering slab of dancey, noisy yet melodic and sharp songwriting that sounds like very little else in the current music landscape. While Cold Court may desire maturity and specificity on their next project with HANDS UP, they’ve already forged, through their electric discourse, a perfect and unique language with which to say it.

Photography By: Claude J. Easy