Future Sound: No Windows

Our column celebrating music to watch continues with Edinburgh dream-pop duo No Windows. As their debut EP looms on the horizon, Fiona Shepherd speaks to them about musical chemistry, grungy reverie and weird songs about dogs

Despite their relatively tender years, 18-yearold Verity Slangen and 16-year-old Morgan Morris are already veterans of a number of bands. First there was Five One: ‘everyone in the band was super-short,’ says Morris, ‘and that was the average height.’ Then there was Renton: no prizes for guessing which film Morris had just watched.

‘Some of them were good, some of them were bad . . . actually, they were all pretty bad,’ he says, reflecting on those early endeavours. ‘I think it’s handy for us now having those years because we’ve been able to build up a musical chemistry just naturally.’

Now Slangen and Morris are poised to release their debut EP as dream-pop duo No Windows, the first band they’ve formed with no school connections. The pair met at Edinburgh’s Trinity Academy where Morris is still a student. Slangen, a year ahead, is now studying social sciences at college.

While Morris is an Edinburgh native, Slangen was born in Manchester, and lived in Norwich and London before her family moved to Scotland. Morris hails from a musical background, receiving piano lessons from a young age, while Slangen made her own way via school choirs before picking up guitar at secondary. ‘When I was younger, I would randomly sing these weird songs about my dog,’ she says. ‘When I hit 12, 13 (that really angstridden period), I decided it would be best to write my own music.’

Morris, meanwhile, was not getting on well with formal instrumental tuition (‘I could never read sheet music; I still struggle with it’) but made a breakthrough when he was taught production and began writing his own songs on keyboards. Of his own volition, he took up guitar, bass and drums: sounds like the makings of a band . . .

Slangen and Morris are now making their way as a live concern, picking up support slots across the central belt, and festival appearances at Connect and Tenement Trail but, appropriately, given the claustrophobic name, No Windows was birthed from their separate home endeavours during the pandemic.

Even now, the duo never write together: Morris will start with a chord progression, Slangen adds melody and lyrics, and Morris layers on the effects which lend their music a grungy reverie. ‘I always think the lo-fi thing is unintentional,’ says Morris. ‘My best efforts in making something pristine usually ends up sounding super rough; in a good way.’ Mazzy Star often crops up as an influence on Slangen while, collectively, they can agree on Alex G.

‘There are artists we share an interest in and some we will never agree on liking,’ says Morris. ‘But I think the stuff that influences the band sonically is quite down the middle. There’s loads of stuff we listen to that doesn’t influence the music whatsoever: I listen to a lot of rap, Verity is a drum’n’bass garage head. I doubt you’d hear that in any of our stuff.’

No Windows’ EP The Fishboy is released on Something, Friday 25 November.