Get ready to witness the birth of a new era of British punk. Mama ft. Antonella is the most dynamic outfit to hit the scene in years, bleeding the raw aggression of punk rock into driving beats of electro-pop. In recent years, the music industry has experienced a surge of innovation; artists that are breaking down the barriers and pushing the boundaries of traditional genres. Mama encompasses this very spirit of innovation – resulting in creatively bilingual electronic music that isn’t afraid to provoke you.
These days, genre is on the face of extinction. The rulebook is drastically changing. Colouring inside of the lines has never been so unfashionable. Few wish to create without hyphens or slashes.
Enter Mama ft. Antonella – a multi-hyphenate duo that all but extends a hand out to you; as you march behind them, plunging you straight into depths of organised chaos.
“I Want What I Want” is Mama ft. Antonella’s debut. And as a track, it wholly channels vocalist Antonella’s wrath and untamed recklessness. Her vocal hits your ear just right, with a dark energy that packs a powerful punch. It’s hard to imagine that when Antonella was asked to sing with the Jesus and Mary Chain at the age of 19, she declined (later explaining that it’s because she was too shy).
“I Want What I Want” weaves electronic and pop elements with a gritty, lo-fi production – that almost results in a new genre entirely. Punk via post-punk, psychedelia via avant electronica. It’s hard to pin the genre down.
As a listener, the lyrics draw you into a sort of BDSM trance, and it’s the newness of the sound itself that results in you giving the track a second play straight away.
Who is this electro-punk goddess?
Antonella is a bit like a modern, Australian-Italian Joan Jett. The offering itself is something like Siouxsie and the Banshees during the fertile post-punk era – at an underground rave, on the outskirts of the city – at 3am.
“Do you know what I want, what I want, the way I want it, NOW”, chants Antonella, with her perfectly imperfect delivery that forces you to attention. “Get off, get off, get off, get off, get off, get off, hey!”
To be honest, it’s one of the most honest, clever and catchy tunes I’ve heard in a long time. I haven’t stopped listening to it since I started, and to me, it sounds like it’s the start of something much larger in the making.
So how did it all come together?
As the story goes, emerging artist Antonella was granted a rare opportunity to collaborate with the highly acclaimed multi-platinum producer Gavin Monaghan (aka DIE FLEDERMAUS) at the request of a record company CEO.
Gavin’s worked with everyone from industry icons Robert Plant and Grace Jones to pop powerhouses like Celine Dion. In 2022, he clinched the coveted BMA Producer of the Year award for a second time. That same year, his studio, Magic Garden, also received the BMA Studio of the Year award (again) – cementing his position as a force to be reckoned with in industry.
Aiming to infuse his debut single for Mama ft. Antonella with the same urgency as the songs he loved in the dance clubs of Berlin (where he lived in the 90s), Gavin composed the music for “I Want What I Want” in a fever at Magic Garden Recording Studio in Wolverhampton, England.
“I remember one sweaty underground rave in particular,” he says. “The smell of Amyl was all-pervasive, and the dancing was incredibly tribal. So I wanted to recreate, using 8-bit samples and classic analogue equipment, the same pulsing industrial and early techno sound.”
Gavin used a Korg MS20 for the bass with the glide setting on to achieve the classic Giorgio Moroder pulse with a 909 drum machine sampled to tape and distorted to achieve the Euro Techno sound he thought “would be the perfect foil to Antonella’s big, strict diva voice”.
Like the voice, the sound is highly distinctive.
“I wanted people to feel like they were cruising down the autobahn with no speed limits on their way to this gothic city – statues of angels against the darkening sky, people in heavy black coats in the subways, the clubs beginning to pump, that whole Berlin vibe,” Gavin says.
Mama vocalist Antonella Gambotto-Burke decided to blend this primitive, intensely sexual beat with a kind of war cry. “Think of Raye’s heartbreakingly numb ‘you might as well stick it in’ and Lana del Rey’s American Whore – a staggeringly beautiful song, but which, once again, reflects only the desperation and emptiness of the 21st century feminine experience.”
Keep your eyes on these guys, feels like something big is in the works.
Check out “I Want What I Want” below – now!
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