Interview: Grove | LOUD Bristol Issue Four
Posted on: 07 Apr 2022This article was first published in the fourth issue of LOUD Bristol, 365Bristol's dedicated music magazine. Read LOUD Bristol Issue Four and browse our first three editions here.
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Grove
Grove is distinct in an exciting zeitgeist of evocative, forward-thinking music in Bristol. Here, the vocalist and producer recalls their formative years, two breakout EPs and a mounting stack of personal accolades.
"I’ve got a rehearsed answer for this,” Grove laughs in characteristically affable fashion, readying themself for a demonstration. “You’ve got your blender right here,” they say, sliding their half-finished pint of Pilsner across the table. “You chuck in a bit of Dancehall, a bit of jungle, a bit of punk and a bit of pop – whisk that up and pour it in a cup and that’s Grove." Hip Hop gets an honourable mention.
It’s a head-spinning recipe - a bold fusion of flavours combining to create nothing short of monumental. Taking elements of all without fully belonging to one, Grove’s genre-defying mix has endowed their output with a special sense of urgency, marking them out as one of the most vital voices in Bristol’s leftfield music community.
Combining unflinchingly direct, occasionally tongue in cheek and sometimes sensual lyricism with dark, brooding basslines and coiled, murky grooves you can sink into, the vocalist and producer is a patchwork artist. Constantly in dialogue with the world around them, their 2021 EP releases, Queer + Black and SPICE, filter their ever-morphing, cross pollinating sonic sensibilities through visceral experiences woven intuitively into their work as a form of cathartic expression.
“What I usually do to keep myself grounded is ask, ‘what would 14-year-old Beth think of current Beth?’ They’d think that you’re fucking sick and that you deserve everything you’ve got”
- Grove
When we connect in Bedminster on an overcast Monday threatening a storm at any moment, Grove is half an hour late - delayed after a full day of meetings and a calendar mishap. Following a proper hello, we settle into a quiet corner of the Steam Crane on North Street; their spirited energy contrasting my assumption that they’ve had a beige office day.
Failing to suppress an ear-to-ear grin, Grove modestly reveals a dizzying milestone: “There was this domino effect of events that were totally random but ended up with me supporting Metronomy! It’s pretty fucking mad.”
It’s an impossibly cool excuse. Grove is officially a jet-setting international artist, booked to open for the indie-pop titans at a string of shows in Spain and Portugal in early March - the latest in a long line of richly deserved permeations outside of Bristol.
Grove’s ostensibly sudden emergence following their double punch of breakout hits has all the hallmarks of a meteoric rise, but they’re quick to point out that getting to this point has been a gradual process – a decade long period of honing their craft.
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Growing up in Cheltenham, they were surrounded by a melting pot of music from an early age, listening to everything from reggae, ballads, and 70s rock, to pop, hip hop and grime. Aged 15, they joined a prog metal band, later performing as a singer-songwriter before entering the hip hop sphere as a part of a beatbox crew called 5mics.
“The first shows that I did had big sweaty mosh pits, and me being a clueless individual thrown into that, I was like ‘what the fuck is going on?’” they laugh. “But I think performing regularly since the age of 15 ... I guess it’s just a good time to be doing that. It meant that by the time I was 16 I had no stage fright so I could really let go and just channel my energy into the being as opposed to the doing of a performance.”
To this day, Grove considers themself a live artist, giving more weight of consideration when creating tracks as to how they will play out on stage rather than sound on record. But perhaps none of these formative shows would have occurred without the like-minded musical luminaries they encountered during this developmental period, namely: Malaki, Griz-O (“aka the southwest Sick-O”), JPDL and Diessa.
Born and raised as Beth to dual heritage parents and as a queer Person of Colour, each of these individuals helped lay the foundations for everything great they are doing today, during a period in which they were subject to numerous microaggressions that left them feeling isolated. “I don’t think I’d always felt held in a community. When I first experienced that in Cheltenham I was like, ‘yo, this is the most important thing that we’ve got as humans!’
“When I found the crew, I felt comfortable in myself around them. I didn’t need to be anything other than myself, which meant I had a solid foundation of who I am as opposed to who I’m performing as.”
Grove is a vessel that comes off Beth for expressing vulnerability and sensuality alongside being an artery for catharsis and the expulsion of energy. “I’ve had years of being ashamed of various things that made me feel different. It’s made me reclaim that a little bit and say, ‘actually this is normal and I just wanna make fucking noise about it.”
Powerfully defined by the world around Beth, Grove brings to life visceral experiences in urgent and club-ready fashion. “‘Black’ happened because Colston was chucked in the river. To have something like a slave trader torn down ... it made me feel something all over my body,” they say.
“‘Black’ happened because Colston was chucked in the river. To have something like a slave trader torn down ... it made me feel something all over my body”
- Grove
“‘Sticky’ was about the first time I went to an event called Pxssy Palace - a party in London that is purely for queer People of Colour. I remember walking in for the first time to a whole warehouse of queer People of Colour – the most I’d seen in one place before that was one maybe two including myself – so this place was totally perspective changing. These experiences are woven into it.”
Although the irony of unveiling two club-ready EPs amid a global pandemic is palpable, Grove’s heady concoctions have proved just as energising and resonant in an earbud as they reliably do on the dancefloor - evident in the ever-increasing airtime their music is receiving on national radio. “It’s hard to conceptualise being on [BBC] 6music. It does just mean a broad range of people who I never would have expected to be listening to a tune like skin2skin, are,” they say.
With numerous bookings at festivals including End of The Road and Wide Awake and collaborations with SCALPING and more that I can’t reveal here to come in 2022, the thoroughly deserved accolades continue to stack up for Grove. “What I usually do to keep myself grounded is ask, ‘what would 14-year-old Beth think of current Beth?’ They’d think that you’re fucking sick and that you deserve everything you’ve got.”
Read LOUD Bristol Issue Four in full here.
Image credit: Khali Ackford
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George is a journalism graduate and writer passionate about music and culture. Get in touch via email at george@365bristol.com
