{"id":2023571,"date":"2025-09-15T12:39:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T12:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2023571"},"modified":"2025-09-15T12:39:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T12:39:12","slug":"indie-boy-gone-bad-the-hidden-cameras-on-their-kinky-clubland-inspired-new-sound-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/indie-boy-gone-bad-the-hidden-cameras-on-their-kinky-clubland-inspired-new-sound-music\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Indie boy gone bad\u2019: the Hidden Cameras on their kinky, clubland inspired new sound | Music"},"content":{"rendered":"

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At a recent Monday night gig in London, Joel Gibb \u2013 AKA the Hidden Cameras \u2013 took to the stage with his acoustic guitar dressed in a sensible white shirt, looking for all the world as if he\u2019d come straight from an office job. As he played a suite of Hidden Cameras songs old and new, the guitar was dropped, the shirt came undone then was removed, revealing a white vest. The room starting shaking to an electronic backing track, and things got sweaty. \u201cIt was a rebirth,\u201d he says from a booth in the studio where he recorded new album of electronic pop pumpers Bronto, \u201clike the indie boy gone bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/svg><\/span>The Hidden Cameras Bronto album cover<\/span> Photograph: PR<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The synth-driven purr and slink of Bronto makes for a startling shift from country-tinged last album Home on Native Land and the exuberant multi-instrumental pop with which the Hidden Cameras first emerged from Toronto, Canada in the early 2000s. This genre twist was thanks to the melodies largely being written in Gibb\u2019s head on the house and techno dancefloors of Berlin, his home for the last two decades. \u201cI kept singing the same refrains to myself over other tracks \u2013 the \u2018ooh\u2019 and the \u2018ah\u2019, the \u2018ah\u2019, the \u2018ooh\u2019,\u201d he says, \u201cwhat else are you going to do? Dance music<\/a> is very empty, but dancing is meditative.\u201d<\/p>\n

While this genesis means the album is in part his homage to Berlin, Gibb adds that it\u2019s also a dialogue with Munich, where the songs were fleshed out and recorded with longtime collaborator Nicolas Sierig as they both got to grips with learning how to use a collection of old synthesisers. \u201cIt was better to work with someone that\u2019s not in the dance world to make some dance tracks and to create a whole new way of making a record,\u201d he says. Although Berlin is the place to \u201cparty in and gain experiences\u201d, Munich became a lens through which to examine them. He praises the city for having \u201ca different vibe. It\u2019s fun to go there and record. It\u2019s calm. It\u2019s clean. It\u2019s conservative.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/svg><\/span>\u2018Everyone has a song called I Want You, and I am making mine\u2019 \u2026 Joel Gibb.<\/span> Photograph: Max Zerrahn<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The tension between the conservative and the hedonist is one of the constants between early Hidden Cameras, when he described the band as \u201cgay church folk music\u201d, and today. Their celebrated 2003 album The Smell Of Our Own celebrated gay sex and an escape from religious shame (Gibb was brought up in the Baptist church), making them outliers from what was still a fairly hetero-dominated indie rock scene. This included gloriously explicit songs referencing soldier orgies, kneeling \u201cfor the taste of a man\u201d and about the joys of a golden shower. \u201cI\u2019m surprised I wrote those lyrics, actually,\u201d says Gibb; \u201cI\u2019m very conservative now.\u201d I am not entirely sure if his bashful tone is serious. There\u2019s a pause. It is only in London, he adds, where he has been on gay dating apps and seen men stating they\u2019re H&H, meaning high and horny and looking for chemsex. \u201cHow are people in London H&H?\u201d he muses. \u201cThey\u2019ve got rent to pay and it\u2019s so expensive.\u201d<\/p>\n

The world has become kinkier in the last 20 years, catching up with the Hidden Cameras. In a city where little is taboo, Bronto\u2019s inspirations are not just from Gibb\u2019s visits to the darker corners of clubs like Berghain. Some of the sensuality comes from more vanilla sources, such as the German openness around the body. \u201cThe whole nudity thing here is so much more normal,\u201d says Gibb, \u201cIn Germany, you\u2019re not allowed to wear your bathing suit in the sauna \u2013 they\u2019ll yell at you. It forced me to be comfortable with nudity, and it did infiltrate the music.\u201d<\/p>\n

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