Working Men’s Club have an uncanny ability to make us dance whilst standing still. The English electronic music group led by 20-year-old singer and songwriter Syd Minsky-Sargeant dropped one of our fave tracks of 2022 in April’s “Circumference”, and this week unveil a gauntlet beat with “Ploys,” a pulsating industrial dance track with an undertow like draw. It’s augmented by a music video directed by artist and filmmaker Edwin Burdis, and starring Jamaican international weightlifter Chloe Whylie. We’re used to sweating through listening to Working Men’s Club; now their videos are having the same impact.
“When we heard the album I wanted to be involved immediately,” says Burdis. “It was a good opportunity to work with the artist/hybrid athlete Whylie and create a meeting of feminine meets masculine in an EDM-world.”
Working Men’s Club certainly dabble more in EBM than EDM, but the point remains. Like “Circumference,” “Ploys” will be featured on the group’s forthcoming second album Fear Fear, produced by Ross Orton (Arctic Monkeys, MIA, Tricky) and out July 15 via Heavenly Recordings/[PIAS]. It follows their 2020 self-titled debut, and encapsulates a sound that can only be made by disaffected youth in Northern England — in this case, the need-to-Google market town and civil parish town of Todmorden in the Upper Calder Valley of West Yorkshire.
“The first album was mostly a personal documentation lyrically, this is a blur between personal and a third-person perspective of what was going on,” says Minsky-Sargeant. “I like the contrast of it being happy, uplifting music and really dark lyrics. It’s not a minimal record, certainly compared to the first one. That’s because there’s been a lot more going on that needed to be said.”
Work it on out below.