Chaney
Chaney
Introducing Chaney; the young producer rising out of suburban Swindon on a one man mission to save your weekend.
Newly signed to Skint, the 20-year-old songwriter comes through with the Hacienda-swagger of Primal Scream and the dry wit of Mike Skinner. When he’s not throwing raves in his local pub, he’s writing tracks like lead single “Let U Know” – complete with video featuring a drunk Noel Gallagher lookalike licking windows (based on a true story).
Chaney might have started in the middle of nowhere, but he won’t be there for long.
Theo Altieri’s career in music began early. Born and raised in Swindon, he got his start touring pubs, playing drums in his brother’s band until his older sibling decided he was too cool to play alongside an eight-year-old and Theo was forced to go solo. So he picked up a guitar, starting writing songs and had signed a publishing deal before the age of 18.
After making his trade as a singer/songwriter for a while, he started to experiment more with dance music, playing with loops and beats in his parent’s basement. Following a serendipitous encounter with Primal Scream’s seminal Screamadelica, he landed on a sound that fused his melodic sensibilities with his growing affection for the Great British Rave. What emerged quickly became his signature style: winking odes to nights out, set against irresistible club-ready backdrops.
Chaney was born.
Despite describing it as the “least aspirational place in the world”, Swindon is at the beating heart Chaney’s music. His hometown – a nowhere-land slap-bang somewhere between Bristol and Reading – has recently become something of an obsession for the 20-year-old. As one by one his friends have drifted away to university or bought houses and settled down, he’s been left with little more than the dreary high-streets for company. “People do nothing during the week and then the town centre is carnage every weekend,” he laughs. “There’s nothing else to do.”
His love affair with the town took on new meaning last year, when the chance to play some records in his local pub blossomed into something special. “It was around the time of the ‘save fabric’ campaign, so we thought we’d take the piss and call the night Save Swindon,” he remembers. “Nightlife has always been dry growing up. I mean, there were a few house parties, but in terms of clubs it’s just a bunch of places still playing Disclosure’s first album.”
The turnout was ridiculous. The weekend warriors who’d been forced into hiding came out in numbers, and Save Swindon became a semi-regular fixture. Bank holiday Sundays saw the straight through-crew crawling over each-other to get to the bar. Chaney remembers a bunch of old school ravers, who were en route to a happy hardcore night, cramming in to sample the sounds. “It was a good forty or fifty of them,” he explains. “The acid house flags were up – I realised then we were onto something.”
It’s this affection for the characters of his hometown, and his love affair with 1990s rave tunes, that birthed his inimitable style.
Take lead single, “Let U Know”, which sets the tone via a roof-rattling rave-inspired beat and a shower of Hacienda-keys. The tune is topped off by a video inspired by Swindon’s strangest local news story. “I saw this article, that said ‘Noel Gallagher Lookalike Spotted in Swindon, Drinking White Ace and Licking Windows’,” Chaney laughs. “So we decided to recreate that.” The visuals see our bewildered hero pursued by a cider-swilling Gallagher through the battered backstreets of his hometown. It’s an unusual ride, but the ideal initiation into Chaney’s world.
In all his music Chaney injects his mundane environs with a wit seldom seen since the Streets were last in the charts. Take “All Inclusive Holiday”, a nod to the sort of resorts that have a beer pump at breakfast, or “In My House” in which Chaney considers the housekeeping rules of his newly property owning friends; these are bangers from behind the sofa. From the small-town claustrophobia of “Down at Dixon’s”, to the hungover lament of “Head Aches” – admittedly written after a “massive sesh” – Chaney is a relatable voice for the anywhere-but-London contingent. The fed up and the forgotten, looking out the window, waiting for the weather to change.
Save Swindon has since become something of a mission statement for the man – a clarion call to his hometown to reach for something better, something more. Going forward he has plans to take the Save format on tour, to “shitholes just like Swindon” blending DJ sets with live interpretations of his material. Save Swindon will also be the name of his first EP, dropping early in 2018. Chaney has even worked with artist and rave specialist RyCa (Ryan Callahan), on the visual identity of the first release – so it should be suitably living it large.
Most of all, Chaney is about making something people can relate to: whether they’re the downtrodden dreamers of satellite towns, or simply the party people who can’t find a decent night out. “I think there are people out there who need speaking for,” he explains. “Without being too rock n roll about it, I think people need someone genuine to come through.” In Chaney, they might have found their man.
