Guttersnipe: The Xenofeminist Noise That Learns From Ants

Guttersnipe makes music that feels like a system collapsing in real time. It is a volatile compound of blown-out hardcore, free-jazz skronk, and electronic interference, held together by a logic that seems alien yet meticulously organised. After eight years, the Leeds duo of Uroceras Gigas and Tipula Confusa return with a new album, ‘Ubermensch’, a work that channels what they term “crisis energy” into a defiant, forward-looking noise.

Their prolonged silence was not inactivity but a period of deep, collaborative fermentation. The pair’s creative process is a total fusion, a continuous exchange of audio files and ideas that slowly coheres into their chaotic sound. This method mirrors their philosophical grounding. They are proponents of xenofeminism, a framework they apply directly to their art. For Guttersnipe, it’s a tool to dismantle the stagnant, often nostalgic hierarchies of rock music, to build something stranger and more open from the fragments.

This drive to reconfigure extends to their view of the natural world. Their chosen names, taken from scientific classifications for a sawfly and a crane fly, signal a deep fascination with non-human intelligence. “We both have a very deep interest in non-human life on Earth,” says Gigas, “and the movements and systems of organisation that occur in termite colonies or ants or shoals of fishes.” They see in these insectile structures a model of radical, decentralised cooperation, a stark contrast to human individualism. This biomimicry isn’t metaphorical. It’s a core tenet, an attempt to channel the dense, swarm-like logic of a hive into the structure of a song.

The result is music that is fiercely intelligent and physically overwhelming. ‘Ubermensch’ is not a retreat into familiar aggression. It is a deliberate, complex escalation. Their noise is a form of world-building, an active search for new forms of communion and resistance within sound. In Guttersnipe’s hands, the apparent chaos of a termite mound becomes a blueprint, and the future of heavy music is a colony, endlessly building and adapting.