There’s Something Bubbling Under Chalk’s Crystalpunk
Chalk. Photo credit: Shannon Johnston (@me_onlylouder).
Ahead of their Treefort set in Boise, the Belfast duo — Ross Cullen and Benedict Goddard — were posted up at the Record Exchange, signing copies of Crystalpunk for a steady stream of curious listeners and already-converted devotees. It felt strangely analogue for a band whose music often sounds engineered for a near-future collapse: strobe-lit, confrontational, wired to both warehouse euphoria and post-punk dread.
Formed by award-winning musicians and filmmakers Cullen and Goddard, the Belfast project has spent the last several years refining a sound that folds industrial techno, noise rock and political urgency into something volatile and immersive. Their debut full-length Crystalpunk feels less like a traditional album than a total environment, a world rendered through pounding percussion, corroded synths and chants that feel insurgent.
The title arrived early, during the first week of recording, but quickly expanded into something larger than a name. As Cullen describes it, the phrase seemed to suggest its own genre before the band had fully articulated it themselves. “There were a few names thrown about and Crystalpunk just stuck,” Cullen shares. “Maybe we could write an album of music that’s like a crystal ball or something.” What began as an intuitive phrase became a visual and sonic logic for the record — informing everything from music videos to the album’s spiked glove iconography, designed with collaborator Lucinda Graham. “It kind of revealed itself to be this centrepiece of the Crystalpunk chapter,” they explain.
That sense of emergence seems central to how Chalk work. Even when discussing influences — from Underworld and Nine Inch Nails to newer experimental acts — they frame influence less as citation than motivation. “Our goal was to write something that felt like it was ours,” Cullen says, “but still being proud of our influences… not shying away from talking about them.”
Photo credit: Shannon Johnston (@me_onlylouder).
That makes sense coming from Belfast, a city the duo describe as historically tied to both punk and electronic subcultures. Though often associated with a rich punk lineage, the duo point just as readily to the city’s electronic underground as formative. “It’s definitely more of a DJ scene,” they say, linking Chalk’s fusion of punishing rhythm and punk physicality directly back to home. Yet what emerges in their description of Belfast is less a scene report than a portrait of cultural momentum. “There’s something bubbling,” Cullen says. “It’ll be interesting to see what it’s going to be in the next couple of years.”
Having built early momentum through festivals across Europe before headlining their own rooms, to touring with Idles, the band have a clear affection for showcase culture. “At a festival, you’re there to try and win people over,” they say. But they’re equally quick to note the singular electricity of their own shows: “There is kind of nothing like your own show… everyone there is there to see you.” It’s a distinction that surfaced again discussing career turning points. One memory in particular still carries weight: stepping in early on for Graham Coxon’s side project at a French festival and suddenly performing to 8,000 people. “It felt like taking the stabilizers off,” Cullen recalls. “It felt like we could do anything after that.”
Touring with Idles marked another inflection point — especially meaningful given the band’s early influence. These moments, they suggest, have arrived in increments rather than breakthrough mythology. “Every year there’s maybe one of those.”
Even amid all the dystopian aesthetics, there is humour and looseness. Asked whether they’d ever play a cover, as I received a piece of advice from a SXSW delegate who insisted every band should, they laugh at the idea. A version of The Prodigy’s “Firestarter” has been discussed, they admit, before joking they may simply be “too lazy to learn a cover.”
Photo credit: Shannon Johnston (@me_onlylouder).
Moments like that puncture any temptation to romanticize Chalk solely through severity and that humanity matters.
For a debut, Crystalpunk carries unusual conviction — not because it resolves tension, but because it trusts tension as a creative engine. Or as Cullen puts it, speaking about Belfast but perhaps accidentally describing the band too: “There’s something bubbling.”
You can hear it.
