The both met up in Rundell’s Forest Hill studio where he recorded and produced his recent solo album ‘O.M.Days’. Lias featured on Rundell’s track from the album,  ‘Ample Change’. Raf described the song: “this tune that we made together, ‘Ample Change’, came out of just bumping into each other around gigs, and always chatting about music”.

Asked about forthcoming projects, Saoudi said: “I’m working on a deadline for a piece of writing at the moment. I’ve ventured off into the literary sphere”. He continues: “Basically the whole of the last ten years, it wasn’t an accident, it was consciously lowering the bar, lowering expectations to a chronic level of dismay, and then even an average couple of paragraphs will seem slightly impressive”. 

The book that is being written in collaboration with another writer is going to be about sex therapy. Saoudi commented: “It’s part manual, part confessional, but that’s all I can say about it now. It’s a handbook. A handbook confessional!”. You can watch and listen to the whole chat below.

Recently this month, Fat White Family played live in The Lexington, in London Islington. The venue was closed for almost fourteen months due to the pandemic. The band played some of their biggest hits like: ‘Confessions’, ‘Activist’ or ‘Mustard Seed’ to name a few. “A Fat Whites gig normally teeters on the very edge of outrage and chaos, but tonight is a more sedate and controlled affair – one of poise and quiet beauty. Flute, acoustic guitar and synths might not be exactly what we were expecting but it’s pretty much what we needed” said the reviewer. 

Fat White Family will play live at two festivals this year. Tickets can be purchased here.

18/06/21 – Bigfoot Festival – Alcester
07/08 – South Facing – Bromley

Pleased to announce that we are playing South Facing in London on August 7th this summer, alongside Sleaford Mods and Baxter Dury. Hopefully see you there xx

Tickets: https://t.co/Hk1BysjINN pic.twitter.com/WffUzgaTei

— Fat White Family (@FatWhiteFamily) April 15, 2021

Sleaford Mods took to Twitter to write: “Yoo. Chuffed to be Headlining the Saturday for this badness at @SouthFacingFest at Crystal Palace bowl, August 7th. Loads of other wick acts on too. It’s gunna be fucking wick. Come down, say hello. Dance. Scream. Get twated.” 

Yoo.

Chuffed to be Headlining the Saturday for this badness at @SouthFacingFest at Crystal Palace bowl, August 7th. Loads of other wick acts on too. It’s gunna be fucking wick. Come down, say hello. Dance. Scream. Get twated.

https://t.co/46XYNJT5tF

— Sleaford Mods (@sleafordmods) April 15, 2021

Marcus Weedon, the director of the festival, said: “After what’s been an extremely difficult 12 months for the live music industry, we can’t wait to put on a fantastic series of events that people can really get excited about.”  

“Not only do we have some amazing artists who are itching to put on a great show, we also have the privilege of being able to stage the festival at an iconic and important outdoor London venue, which has sadly been dormant in recent years. We’re all working incredibly hard to make sure South Facing is a fitting return to glory for the Crystal Palace Bowl!” 

Other artists set to perform as part of South Facing Festival include Dizzee Rascal and The Outlook Orchestra on Saturday 14th August, Supergrass on Friday 20th August, and Max Richter on Saturday 28th August. Tickets for the festival are available to buy here. 

Sleaford Mods, made up of vocalist Jason Williamson and musician Andrew Fearn, began in 2007. They are known for lyrics focusing on politics and working-class culture. Their most recent album Spare Ribs, released in January this year, hit number four in the UK Albums Charts. They are set to tour the UK in November and December 2021, visiting cities such as Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, and Brighton. 

Announcing the news on Instagram, the band wrote: “We are thrilled to announce that, in the wake of a quite frankly astonishing response to our recent film ‘Moonbathing in February’, we will soon be hitting the road to perform some of the new material debuted within. The shows will be intimate, sat down affairs due to social distancing. Tickets will thus be extremely limited.” 

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The rock band will be performing from 17 May 2021 to 22 May 2021. Kicking off their socially distanced tour at The Lexington London, they will be playing five dates across England. The tour is entitled ‘Moonbathing in February’ in support of their film, which streamed last week (2 April 2021.)

Speaking about their film ‘Moonbathing in February,’ with Vice, Fat White Family frontman Lias said: “We thought we’d just make a little cowboy movie instead of live streaming a gig, which I guess is what Moonbathing in February amounts to. It’s a no budget, DIY portrait of that stage of the album-making process where you’re just throwing shit at the wall until something sticks. [It’s] an exploration of ancient Hastings and an attempt to work out what, if anything, it means to be in a band at this abysmal juncture in music history.”

The film was only available for 24 hours, but the band plan to do a second streaming on 13 May 2021 for those who buy tour tickets. Writing about the stream on Instagram, the band said: “A lot of people – several at least – have been asking me what this new film is actually about, if I could maybe be a little more specific about it before they part with their fivers. Let me be quite clear then: this film is about lust. Moonbathing in February is out this Friday, available for only 24 hours, after which it will be ceremonially uploaded to our managers hard drive and forgotten about forever.”

Lead singer Soudi recently revealed his go-to lockdown songs; in an interview with Vice, he said: “My lockdown consisted of mainly two songs: Leonard Cohen’s “Closing Time” and Bob Dylan’s “Jokerman”. The production on both is kind of disgusting in lots of ways, kind of gloriously pathetic, which seemed more than apt given the world we were then waking up to; a kind of flaccid apocalypse.”

Formed in Peckham back in 2011, the South London band have been hailed for their propensity to wade into class-war politics with their lyrics. They released their first single ‘Cream of the Young’, in March 2013 and released their debut album ‘Champagne Holocaust’ later that year. They have since released two further studio albums, ‘Songs for Our Mothers’ in 2016 and ‘Serfs Up’ in 2019.  

England Tour Dates

17/05/21 – The Lexington – London
18/05 – De La Warr Pavillion – Bexhill
19/05 – Chalk – Brighton
21/05 – Brudenell Social Club – Leeds
22/05 – YES – Manchester

Tickets go on sale 9 April 2021 here. 

The post starts with Fat White Family agreeing with Williamson’s views,”I’m 100% with Jason Williamson on that band Idles”, before the band then reveals why they think so, “the last thing our increasingly puritanical culture needs right now is a bunch of self neutering middle class boobs telling us to be nice to immigrants”. This harkens back to Williamson’s statement about the Bristol band, “there were lines like “Tarquin” that would insinuate that they were knocking the middle classes, but it turns out they’re not working class”.

The post continues, “you might call that art, I call it sententious pedantry”. However, the band, in typical Fat White Family fashion, went on to lampoon Sleaford Mods stating, “That being said how long are Sleaford Mods going to keep banging on about shit wages and kebabs? There’s only two of them and they have NO BACKLINE!$$$$$$$$$$$$$££!!!!”.

In the comments many Facebook users accused Fat White Family of also being middle class, to which they replied sarcastically with a picture of the famous photograph Migrant Mother, taken by Dorothea Lange in 1936, which has become a symbol of the Great Depression.

The picture was accompanied with the following words, “Enough is truly enough as far as the dreaded accusations of being middle class are concerned! I didn’t want to share this as it was a very difficult time for me and my family, but below is a photograph of me and my brother Nathan huddling our mother for warmth in 1992. It should be obvious from the look in her eyes that she has never even seen a Waitrose!! CASE CLOSED!!”.

It is unclear whether IDLES or Sleaford Mods will reply to the comments, or if Fat White Family are using the dispute to promote their tour supporting their new album ‘Serfs Up!’, which is released on April 19th. However, with three bands now being involved it would not be surprising if the beef escalates.

Fat White Family’s tour begins in May. A full list of the UK and European tour dates is provided below.

1/5/19 – The 1865 – Southampton
2/5 – Concorde 2 – Brighton – SOLD OUT
3/5 – O2 Academy – Bristol
4/5 – O2 Ritz – Manchester
7/5 – SWG3 TV – Glasgow
8/5 – Button Factory – Dublin
9/5 – Leadmill – Sheffield
10/5 – Rock City – Nottingham
12/5 – Gold Sounds Festival – Leeds
14/5 – Waterfront – Norwich
15/5 – O2 Kentish Town Forum – London
31/5 – La Laiterie – Strasbourg
2/6 – Molotow – Hamburg
3/6 – Bi Nuu – Berlin
12/6 – Botanique Rotonde – Brussels
13/6 – Elysee Montmatre – Paris