With new album Humble As The Sun coming in spring, and a headline slot at Cardiff’s Immersed alldayer, Bob Vylan – the London grime-punk duo comprising Bobby Vylan and Bobbie Vylan – are opening their account for 2024 with trademark energy. Emma Way got an audience with Bobby to discuss sonic evolution, personal motivations, social responsibility, meditation and nature.
How much have you expanded your sound between your last album, 2022’s The Price Of Life, and its followup Humble As The Sun?
Bobby Vylan: On this album, there’s lots of live instrumentation. Even the way those live instruments were recorded was so different. This time we were in bigger studio spaces, and we had the luxury of working with other musicians. Hannah Koppenburg plays piano on this album, and I’m playing some organ. Jonny Breakwell, who helped co-produce the album, is playing some piano on there, and some Rhodes and keys. Our friend Rex Roulette also plays a guitar solo on one of the tracks, so it was cool to be able to go into spaces and try different amps.
At home, where I’ve recorded all the other albums, there’s limited equipment, which makes you creative in a different way. Being able to record drums in a bigger space [meant] being able to have more control over the sound. If we wanted it to sound really big, we could make it sound really big. If we wanted it to sound smaller, we could have it sound smaller. That’s probably one of the biggest ways in which we’ve expanded the sound on this album, and I think that’s quite clear from the opening track – when you hear the organ that starts that album, that’s a live recorded organ. You can’t do that at home!
Did you purposely make it the opening track to signify the difference in your sound early on?
Bobby Vylan: The first track – which is the title track, Humble As The Sun – sets the tone of the album; lyrically, what is spoken about during that song sets the tone of the album. Whenever you hear that organ, you get a gospel feel, and then that provokes imagery of hope and faith, and willpower and strength. There wasn’t anywhere else that track could be on the album. It had to be the first song. It just fell into place, like a lot of this album.
A lot of it came from the meditative processes that I was doing and going through, starting this album and then during it. It was created in a whirlwind of what the band was going through, touring and festivals, but it was also because I finally found somewhere that I could work outside of my bedroom! It was a beautiful space with a garden I could sit in and eat lunch. There was a robin that would regularly visit and look for scraps, and I could just have conversations with myself, and conversations with the sun, and just be in nature and approach the creative process with that in mind.
Speaking of the writing process, how important are humour and irony in your songs? You touch on macho masculinity in He’s A Man, another song from the new album; do you feel like these elements bring a lighter side to otherwise darker topics?
Bobby Vylan: It’s funny – I was listening to We Live Here, the first album [released in 2020], just an hour ago. I can definitely hear how the humour has developed through the projects. We’re speaking about very heavy issues and themes that run through the music. They’re not really funny things, you know, but I think it’s important to be able to find humour in them, and at least present them in a way that there is a moment for you to laugh, even if it’s not a funny thing, just to lighten the mood a little bit. It’s a little bit of sugar to help the medicine go down – it makes it a little easier to digest.
I think naturally, I’m not an angry man all the time, and the band is quite a happy, jovial kind of band when we’re all together on tour. Even onstage, it’s lighthearted in between the songs. We have to make sure that we’re presenting a full, well-rounded picture of the band.
Touring in the past year, when did you realise your music was reaching a wider demographic?
Bobby Vylan: We’ve been seeing the crowds change quite a lot, and where we play also depends on what sort of crowd turns out. It’s more of a younger crowd now that weren’t necessarily there when we first started off. I think that’s probably due to the festivals that we’ve been playing. The crowd has been changing – there’s a lot more women now. It’s interesting to see, depending on where we go, what the crowd looks like and how it differs from city to city.

We’re living in a time where people of influence are being questioned whether or not they use their social platform for positive change. I know you’ve spoken on this before; I was wondering, why do you think a platform requires a voice?
Bobby Vylan: Having a platform that can be used to influence can be quite a tricky thing to balance, and I suppose it can be quite dangerous depending on what a person’s motivations are or even what a person’s education on an issue is. I wouldn’t ever encourage anybody to speak up about something that they didn’t know anything about, but you can definitely offer your platform up to people that do know and promote their voices.
There’s nothing that says you should be using the platform you’ve been given to speak up for Palestine, or gay rights, or women’s rights – but for me, there’s a personal duty to try and better the world. I’m not a perfect person, but it’s important for me personally, and for [bandmate] little Bob, I know that I can speak for him on this as well. We must be constantly bettering ourselves and attempting to help those around us. I have a child – I would like for her to grow up in a world that is better than the one that I grew up in. For me, that’s really my main motivation to speak up.
Whether or not people want to speak up, that’s a personal decision that they have to make, but I do think that if you make a living portraying an image of someone who speaks up for the working class or the oppressed, then I feel like that maybe you have more of an obligation to speak up. And that doesn’t mean you’re going to get it right every time, it doesn’t mean you’re going to be educated on every issue.
On Humble As The Sun, you mention being misquoted by the press, rising rent prices and food poverty – just a few examples of what you go into lyrically, but what would be the best kind of reaction to those lyrics that you could receive?
Bobby Vylan: If people were to hear the album and, when it finishes, feel inspired and feel empowered, that would be the best response that I could possibly ask for. Absolutely.
Bob Vylan headline the Immersed Festival at the Tramshed, Cardiff on Sat 2 Mar.
Tickets: £25/£20 NUS. Info: immersedfestival.co.uk
Humble As The Sun is released on Fri 5 Apr.
words EMMA WAY