Set Dressing at P3 Annihilation Eve

An exciting new project is born as Scott Fair – the guitarist and producer of Manchester noise band Mandy, Indiana – unveils Set Dressing, whose live debut comes this April at p3 annihilation eve (formerly known as Peste).

Mixing coarse industrialism, squalling feedback and contorted electronics, Mandy, Indiana’s 2023 debut album i’ve seen a way blew up in a way that few noise records do. Landing a Best New Music tag from Pitchfork, the band found themselves winning fans in everyone from Daniel Avery to Gilla Band, and swapping basement shows in Manchester for clubs in New York and LA. And don’t worry – Mandy, Indiana are going nowhere. But something interesting is happening alongside.

Scott Fair, the musical driving force of Mandy, Indiana, has announced the debut EP by his new side project, Set Dressing. Released via Fire Talk (the same record company that helped his band blow up), I Can’t Be Alone Tonite drops on 11 April, a day before the first live show. Ringing in this news are two singles, which set the tone for an atmospheric and emotionally complex project, in contrast to Mandy, Indiana’s more violent tendencies.

The first single, ‘Class Valedictorian’ is an instrumental, with droning synths that transport the listener somewhere preternatural. The synth poppy follow-up ‘Date Line’ feels more sci-fi-ish, drawing influence from 1990s toy sounds and advertisements as well as the 2022 experimental horror film, Skinamarink. It’s kind of sweet but ominous at the same time, with uncanny, disembodied chants of ‘I love you’ calling to mind Boards of Canada’s Sesame Street samples in ‘The Color of The Fire’. There’s a David Lynch quote, somewhere, about happiness and sadness being easy to render in art, while the really interesting stuff lies in the ambiguous and the paradoxical. I bet Scott Fair knows the one…

If the EP stands up, this brilliantly weird new project is one you’ll want to get in on on the ground floor. That’s at p3 annihilation eve on 12 April.