Getting To Know: Comanavago

From a chance meeting in university halls to the brink of stardom, COMANAVAGO (pronounced "come and have a go") is the dynamic duo of Ben Dunkerley, aka Shurk, and Gabriel Swarbrick. What began with a simple introduction to Charli XCX's “Vroom Vroom” EP has evolved into a force shaking up the pop scene with their genre-blending sound and electrifying live shows.

Their debut EP, 'If You Think You’re Hard Enough,' burst onto the scene in 2019, mixing noise, grunge, and hyper-pop, and quickly became a mosh pit favorite. After a brief hiatus, the duo returned stronger than ever, dropping their dance-pop masterpiece 'Heart Failure' in 2020, followed by a string of visually stunning music videos that showcased their artistic depth.

2021 saw COMANAVAGO join Ultra Music, where their collaboration on the cover of Sylvester’s "You Make Me Feel" racked up over 12 million plays worldwide. Now, with a new album, "Club Morpheus," set to drop in 2024, they're ready to take their place as the boldest, most boundary-pushing act in pop. With a rockstar attitude reminiscent of Prince and a sound that defies genre and gender norms, COMANAVAGO is here to restart the party and remind the world what true pop rebellion looks like.

1. Your friendship and musical journey began with a shared love for Charli XCX’s Vroom Vroom EP. How did that initial connection influence the development of COMANAVAGO’s unique sound, blending genres like noise music, grunge, and hyper-pop?

It marked a really perfect intersection for us. Ben at the time was really into dark and hard sounds in electronic music and Gabe was listening to lots of glossy pop so 'Vroom Vroom' really showed us a specific example of where we could start working from. At the same time, we both were on an experimental Music Degree so that set us up to have an attitude geared to making the music exciting and new. Our tastes in music are also very different even though there is a big cross over which means we get to pull from a huge amount of references. It's very useful. Gabe's first love is 90s rock and Ben's first instrument is the guitar so there's also this kind of rocky vein running through a lot of what we do even though we're working mostly with synthesised instruments.

2. The release of Heart Failure marked a significant moment in your career, especially with its visual components that expanded the album’s narrative. How do you approach the relationship between your music and its visual representation, and how do these elements enhance the overall experience for your audience?

A lot of the time when we're writing music, we talk a lot about how the music would look. Whether that's conceptually, in a live show, in a music video, in a movie soundtrack, and so on. A lot of our favourite artists have such special and iconic visual material, we want to do our own music justice by aiming for the same thing. You can tell your audience so much if they can see you as well as hear you. Heart Failure is a massively personal album, but it's also really big and camp and ridiculous at the same time, so we leaned into that visually with having angel wings and running around pretending to be chased by drones on Tooting Common. The music could speak for itself but it doesn't have to, it's like only knowing how to speak half a language as an artist if you don't engage with how people see you.

3. After joining Ultra Music and releasing the deluxe version of Heart Failure, your collaboration on the cover of Sylvester’s You Make Me Feel gained significant traction. What was it like working with Solarado on this track, and how did it feel to achieve such widespread recognition?

It's always nice for people to notice what you're doing, and Sylvester is a really special artist. It felt really important to properly honour the memory of such a figurehead of the Black and Queer community, especially as a band who champions those identities. We wanted to do it right. The original version of the cover was absolutely dead accurate with no deviation from the original, but doing that doesn't add anything new, so when the label brought them on board, Solardo added some really cool aspects to modernise our version and set it apart. It's great to know people are listening to the track, it's a really important piece of Queer history.

4. Club Morpheus is described as your boldest project yet, exploring a modern Studio 54-esque world. Can you share more about the inspiration behind this album and how you approached creating its elegant, tightly wound soundscapes and narrative structures?

Heart Failure was written pre-pandemic, Club Morpheus we began writing in the middle of the pandemic over Zoom. We were desperate to be out clubbing and there were these amazing dance records coming out during that time that were really inspiring- particularly Chromatica, we loved what Gaga was doing with that album and we wanted to try to tap into the energy of it. We also love the Matrix movies and that scene where they go to the techno club in the first one really stood out. We were like; If we had a club we'd want it to feel like that; like you were dreaming it, and it was so amazing and everyone looks really hot and really cool. I was sending Ben all these ABBA-y disco demos and Ben was making really deep electro house beats and we managed to marry those ideas into one lane. We wanted to imagine what it would be like if we could engineer every aspect of a club night, not just the music. The location, the decor, the drinks, the costumes, kind of the way Studio 54 was so legendary and specific. That's our dream really, so we made the album feel like that. Lyrically speaking, Heart Failure is ultra honest and a bit depressed, whereas Club Morpheus is more positive but also more made up. We didn't want another album of break-up tracks. We wanted the album to be really uplifting and make you want to connect with other people rather than dwell on sad feelings like Heart Failure did - which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but we're not really into doing the same thing twice. The first tracks on the album we had finished were the very first and very last tracks and we used the next 3 years to fill in the middle and find how to turn that into a full arc. We also collaborated with more people on the album, the first album was so insular, that it felt right to bring in new perspectives and writers and voices, so the album sounds so much more full and varied. Like you're at a party with all the people you love. That's the sound we were chasing.

5. Your music defies gender norms and cultural inhibitions, creating a distinctive presence in the pop landscape. How important is it for COMANAVAGO to push these boundaries, and what message do you hope to convey through your audacious songwriting and performances?

Life can be so interesting when you have all these different characters and personalities in it. If everyone is a boy or a girl with no deviance, you lose so many parts of a spectrum and then everyone becomes a bit robotic. We both exist in the middle of that spectrum so our music does as well. We don't want anything to feel rigid or specific, we want everyone to enjoy what we do and join in. We've got so many friends who exist across the LGBTQIA+ spectrum as well as being Queer people ourselves so we feel really strongly that we have to show up and show out for that community so people can see us because visibility is so important, especially at the moment. So much of Heart Failure the lyrics are quite vague from a pronouns point, but Club Morpheus is much more direct. For example: the song Ketty Perry (Gabe's sister) wrote for the album, we mention boys and girls in the lyrics so it's a bit of a bisexual banger (if we do say so ourselves). What's really nice is getting positive feedback from the audience, people seem to really respond to us which is reassuring. We just want to have fun and get everyone involved.