Start Listening To: Crimewave

Crimewave’s debut album Scenes transforms nightclub chaos into a seamless dance odyssey built entirely from guitars.

Blurring the lines between shoegaze haze and club euphoria, Manchester-based artist Crimewave bends guitars into pulsing dance tracks that feel both human and machine-like. Speaking on his debut album Scenes, Jake Wilkinson reflects on Northern nightlife, DJ culture and the thrill of reshaping familiar tools into something unrecognisable.

For those unfamiliar with your music, can you tell us who you are, where you’re from and about the music you make?

My name is Jake Wilkinson, I’m originally from the North East coast of England but live in Manchester currently - and make music under the name Crimewave.

People have often described my music as a cross between My Bloody Valentine and Aphex Twin. I see the project as an experiment in how far I can go making dance and electronic music, using only guitars. 

Your debut album Scenes is described as a conceptual dance record about Northern UK nightclubs. What drew you to frame the album around these spaces and the misdemeanours within them?

Pretty much all the experiences referenced in the record are personal experiences that took place in Northern Nightclubs. That’s not to say this kind of activity doesn’t happen in the South, but there’s a different kind of hostility if you go into the wrong club in somewhere like Newcastle.

You re-recorded the album as a continuous DJ set using decks. Why was it important for you that the record played like one seamless mix rather than a track-by-track collection?

With the album focussing so much lyrically about the club and club culture, it felt only right to embellish the concept by making the record itself feel like you are listening to someone DJ-ing it at the club.

When I first heard a DJ mix when I was a teenager, it literally blew my mind. I was sat there listening thinking ‘have they just made one huge song?’ - I didn’t even know initially that these were all different songs by different artists being mixed together. I think that’s always stuck with me.

‘White Label’ feels like both a statement of intent and a club-ready weapon. How did that track come together, and why did you choose it as the lead single?

White Label is at the start of the album as it represents starting a DJ set with a floorfiller. And the title itself is a homage to the unreleased music often played by DJ’s on these nights out.

Lyrically the song is about being pickpocketed, but again not being able to do anything about it. In the nightclub you only see flashes of limbs and bodies, so it is impossible to tell who it was that stole your phone.

You’ve managed to make an electronic dance album without a single synth. What made you want to restrict yourself to guitars as your only sound source?

It’s something I’ve always done with Crimewave that I struggle to see myself stopping anytime soon. In an age where you can open a laptop and essentially have access to any sound that’s ever existed, I thinking creatively it helps me having that boundary of only using the guitar. 

Was there a particular moment when you realised you could bend the guitar into the language of club music?

It was discovering Rustie, Mount Kimbie and Bobby Tank when I was a teenager, at the exact same time I discovered Loveless by MBV. I heard the huge synth walls in those producers’ music and thought - couldn’t that just be a shoegaze wall of guitars instead?

The album is full of references to DJ culture, from track titles to BPM transitions. How much of this comes from your own experience behind the decks?

I think this whole album wouldn’t have come about if I hadn’t gotten into DJ-ing before I even started Crimewave. 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. I also gave it a double meaning by making it the first track of the record, since ID is the first thing you need before stepping inside the club.

What do you think guitars can do in dance music that synths cannot?

There’s definitely an accidental and inherently human way that guitars can move even after all the processing I’m doing to them inside the laptop. A lot of tracks around this record were formulated through happy accidents, where the guitar would bend or wail in ways I didn’t expect. I also think it’s something not a lot of people have done before, and that excites me. Like if my music sounded like something I’d heard a number of times before, I just wouldn’t be arsed.

You’ve been part of Manchester’s live electronic scene, which seems to be flourishing right now. What feels unique about the North West approach compared to other dance hubs?

I can’t fully speak on other scenes as much as having spent most of my time in Manchester - but there’s definitely an exciting thing happening with acts predominantly making music on their laptops, but translating it to live in unpredictable and volatile ways. 

You’ve toured with artists as diverse as Kim Gordon, George Clanton, and Machinedrum. How have those experiences fed into the way you see your own project?

They’ve all been inspiring for different reasons - Kim Gordon because her record from last year was maybe the closest thing I’ve heard to someone doing something similar to my music (and made by someone of her generation is incredible). With the George Clanton shows it was just a bunch of kids who were hyped from the off, and seemed to understand the music straight away at all of the shows. Couldn’t have asked for a better reaction to my songs on that tour.

The video for ‘White Label’ has this sense of blurred chaos and nocturnal paranoia. How important are visuals to the Crimewave world?

They really cement the concept to me and bring the world alive like you say. Anything CCTV footage, strobe lights - anything that conveys that sort of Blade Runner-esque urban landscape: neon strip lights reflecting on rain-slicked pavements, and moments of hostility flickering on grainy VHS surveillance.

What do you love right now?

The latest Merzbow record, Sedonis.

What do you hate right now?

The endless slew of post-punk and Windmill adjacent acts the UK music industry seems to consistently be throwing money at. Culture doesn’t move forward because of safe bets.

Name an album you’re still listening to from when you were younger and why it’s still important to you?

I guess the first Crystal Castles record with it being my namesake and all. Their methodology of only using games console chips to make their music has also obviously stuck with my process of only using the guitar to make dance music.

When someone hears your music for the first time, what do you hope sticks with them?

I hope they feel like they haven’t heard anything like it before. Whether they return to it or not is up to them. 

Looking beyond this debut, where do you want to push the Crimewave sound next? More club-oriented, or further into experimental territory?

The music I’ve been making recently has been pushing the instrumental side of things into a way more noisy, experimental, abrasive direction - whilst the vocal side has been getting a lot more poppy, and hook focussed.