Everybody comes from a place of mundanity': northern gothic, the strange music scene rooted in small-town Yorkshire and Lancashire

"He's referring to Withernsea, a faded seaside resort near Hull, where he grew up and then desperately wanted to leave. I remember feeling so resentful, he says. I heard Tracey Chapman's Fast Car and thought: is this song about me? He duly got out aged 17, eventually settling in London and finding success as a visual artist and musician. But in recent years, the 46-year-old began hearing younger avant garde musicians talking about their satellite towns in other often forgotten corners of the north."

"I'd never looked at the north like that, in the way these artists are unravelling these narratives. Having dabbled in music for decades, he was inspired by these acts to embark on his first serious records, with Withernsea as his muse finally seeing his old town as ripe for storytelling. The artists Culver discovered are a wave of experimentalists writing a new chapter in northern English music including Preston's Blackhaine, Bradford's Iceboy Violet, Huddersfield's Aya, Manchester-based Shell Company and others with noirish, club-adjacent sounds"

"With London receiving more culture funding than the entire north of England (according to think tank IPPR North), many young northern artists beyond the metropolis of Manchester find themselves isolated. Everybody comes from a place of mundanity, and [is] able to sit with themselves even sit with horrible thoughts, says Rainy Miller, an artist from the Lancashire town of Longridge who has worked with and released most of these acts on his Fixed Abode label. He has a name for this phenomenon: the northern gothic."

Richie Culver left Withernsea at 17 and later returned to view the town as creative material, inspired by younger avant-garde musicians. These artists, often from overlooked northern satellite towns, produce noirish, club-adjacent sounds paired with confessional lyrics. Many of them collaborate through hubs like the White Hotel in Salford and form a loose scene that draws on alienation and boredom as source material. Funding imbalances favoring London contribute to isolation for artists beyond Manchester. Rainy Miller names the emerging aesthetic the "northern gothic," rooted in mundanity and the willingness to sit with difficult thoughts.

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