Liquid Ritual is the brainchild of three of wave's key figures: London producer Jude "Kareful" Leigh-Kaufman, Portsmouth DJ and producer Guy "LTHL" Barlow and their friend Oskar Barczak. Originally a club night and radio show, it has now added a label arm and both are becoming central outlets for the divisive sound known as 'wave'. Like an increasing number of sub-genres these days, 'wave'—a laid-back trap, dub, grime and R&B-influenced club sound—was born online.
That's not particularly new in and of itself; but the looseknit scene's key figures are looking in new directions to sustain themselves. As Liquid Ritual founders Oskar and Kareful note, tie-ins with VR, video games and other new technologies are just as worthy of consideration as Spotify and iTunes. Wave isn't a bunch of guys claiming to have fixed the problem of making money from music, but they're keener than most to start thinking laterally about how to sustain the music industry and the musicians that comprise it.
Last month saw them throw their launch party, flying in Dutch producer Deadcrow (another important name in wave) and bringing together DJs from across the country to bring their sound to London's Kamio. As you can see from the VHS-shot video from Kiefer Passey and Jordan Noon, above, the night proved to be a bigger success than even they predicted. In fact, New York rapper Lil Peep even swung by for an impromptu performance. As wave's internationally-based proponents overcome the problem of exporting the sound (since it didn't originate in one country), we spoke to Kareful and Oskar about the progression from club night to label and the benefits of being truly international.
Tell us a bit about Liquid Ritual's backstory. How did you guys meet? Why did you decide to start the label and what's the ethos behind it?
Kareful: Liquid Ritual was originally a radio show, which quickly grew a loyal following—we were sent so much unreleased music that it just made sense to start releasing music too! Especially since a lot of the people sending music were relatively unknown.
Oskar: I've known Jude [Kareful] for a number of years now, back from the college days. We were pretty distant for a while, but got back in touch when I moved back to Romford after some studying. I did a seven-month internship at Enhanced and picked up a lot of label management and social media marketing information. I wanted to put them to the test and running a music label was something on my bucket list. I approached Jude over the course of a few months, initially to run the social media of Liquid Ritual, and later I joined on running the back end and administration sides of it all. This is where I put all the information I gained at Enhanced to use. Shout out everyone at Enhanced; they're really great guys.
The problem we are facing is that wave isn't a recognised genre and there really isn't a big 'scene' for it at the moment, so we decided why not try do it ourselves? There's a lot of really talented producers in this community that are being slept on by the masses, and wave is such an emotive genre that everyone can get behind it; regardless of gender or age. So I guess the ethos behind Liquid Ritual is to try make wave reachable to as many people as possible and support independent artists that would have been slept on by major labels. It's all about building a movement and a community.
You had the label launch party last month, right? I hear there was a special guest...
Kareful: The launch was probably the biggest wave event in London yet. From seeing these nights evolve from 30 people to 300+ in over a year has been crazy! we had Lil Peep roll through and perform, which was awesome. The energy at the show was insane. There was a real unique feeling in the air, which got me super emotional. I honestly felt like we were really onto something special—a real reminder that we're on the edge of a whole new movement. So many foreign people flew in just for this event, which is just mind blowing.
Oskar: Oh man! First of all: what a night. I'll be honest, for the first couple of hours I was really anxious about the turnout since Kamio is quite an open space and we weren't as busy as I would have liked. 11pm ticked over and I went to check the room and it was packed. I was hyped! I had people come up to me going "what kind of music is this?" and when I replied "wave", they'd go: "Wow, I never heard this before. It's so sick!" That was what really stuck with me, that we had people who have never heard of the genre come out and be surprised.
We had Spoze perform his first set ever and that was amazing to watch; Deadcrow flew in from the Netherlands to close up and he nailed it; Sweeep flew in from Sweden to open up and she nailed it; and Glacci got the train down from Nottingham and he killed it. Everyone absolutely smashed their sets—everyone was on point. We may have had a bit of a special guest [laughs]. Lil Peep came through with Bexey and they killed it. They set themselves up in the crowd with everyone dancing around them and joining in—it was really intimate. I'm more than happy with the way it all turned out. We had great acts, great vibes, and a great turnout. Thank you again to everyone who came through, especially those of you that flew in—you know who you are.
So what does the future hold for Liquid Ritual?
Kareful: Lots of plans. I'm not sure how much I want to reveal, but we want to keep working on Liquid Ritual as a club night, but keep them special and the fans hungry, so we plan on taking the brand to other countries. We're in talks with a few promoters currently.
Oskar: We've got a couple of huge EPs coming out soon that I think are gonna shake things up a bit in the scene, as well as some amazing singles that we don't want people to sleep on. We're also working with people outside the music industry as well, such as streamers, VR, and we really want to try get wave into video games since that's the media I personally think it will shine in. On top of that, we're actively trying to get the sound into adverts and, in general, more mainstream exposure.
