300SkullsAndCounting and Jenny Sparks announce their signing to XL Recordings with ‘The Ballad of St Nick’s Park,’ the first release from their forthcoming collaborative project. Bringing together 300SkullsAndCounting’s screamo vocals, 8-bit roots and baroque toy-keyboard melodies with Jenny Sparks’ bouncy, bassline-driven production, the track is a chaotic, infectious collision of screamo, rave and club music
Rather than a traditional vocalist/producer pairing, the project is a fully collaborative meeting of both artists’ instrumental, melodic and songwriting instincts, with 300SkullsAndCounting and Jenny Sparks building the music together from the ground up. That push and pull is central to the sound of the forthcoming album, where neither artist simply sits on top of the other’s production.
Out now alongside a music video filmed partly in Leamington’s viral Spar shop, ‘The Ballad of St Nick’s Park’ is an ode to 300SkullsAndCounting’s upbringing around Warwick and Leamington Spa, specifically the St Nick’s Park skatepark which no longer exists. The song turns that memory into something distinctly their own: nostalgic, irreverent and completely unhinged.
300SkullsAndCounting & Jenny Sparks – The Ballad of St. Nick’s Park
Rooted in the UK DIY emo scene, with strong ties to the NYC-based ‘Sex Emo’ adjacent scene, 300SkullsAndCounting blends screamo, breakcore and chiptune with flashes of sassy hip-hop, and electroclash. Their sound is matched by an intensely physical and ever-evolving live performance, made consistent by the use of a pink karaoke microphone.
Jenny Sparks is a bassline producer from London who has spent the last six years developing his sound from a series of DIY studios, including an old hospital hearing-test room, a One Stop Shop in Bethnal Green opposite Tesco’s, and a shed in the back garden of an ex-care home in Stratford. His productions are playful, unpredictable and built for movement, drawing from the elastic rhythms and low-end pressure of bassline while constantly pushing into stranger territory.
Together, the two artists are building something that sits somewhere between a rave, a mosh pit and the internet, a fully collaborative world where screamo, bassline, chiptune and club music collide.
The single artwork features XD RecAWRdings, 300SkullsAndCounting’s spoof label originally inspired by XL Recordings, making this signing to XL all the more absurd.
‘The Ballad of St Nick’s Park’ is out now – via XL Recordings.
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