ALT BLK ERA: “We didn’t confine ourselves to a box or genre. We just allowed ourselves to experiment”

Nyrobi and Chaya Beckett-Messam made alternative music by accident, at first. They’d started life as ALT BLK ERA making dark pop, but one day Nyrobi was rapping in the studio and felt like the song needed something a little heavier to go underneath it. “Just add some guitar,” she said. The result was electrifying.

“We didn’t confine ourselves to a box or genre,” Nyrobi says. “We just allowed ourselves to experiment. We’re still young, we’re teenagers, we want to be creative and we want to express ourselves. Whatever we feel the song needs, it’s reflected in the music.”

The Nottingham sisters didn’t really have alternative music in the fabric of their lives until that point, but their live drummer Sam has been bringing them up to speed by showing them metal heavyweights like Korn, Slipknot and Iron Maiden, as well as newer names such as YONAKA. Before that, they’d grown up with artists like Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill and Rihanna, while Chaya in particular had been a K-pop fan.

They’d been singing together all their lives – “It’d take us three hours to wash up [because we were singing]!” says Chaya – but it was in lockdown that the engine really began rumbling, when their mum suggested they release a song as a means of distracting them from the anxiety and mundanity of pandemic life.

Nowadays, their music is a fierce fusion of rock, trap, alt.pop and whatever else they fancy throwing in. They’ve encountered plenty of people who have no idea what to call them, but why confine yourself to one genre when you can play with them all? Indeed, making music that eludes simple categorisation has been the perfect vessel for their message of inclusion and difference. If you feel like a misfit, you can call their music home.

“We’re unconditionally ourselves,” Nyrobi declares. “We’re really big on building community, making a safe space for people. We want to be perceived like a big hug. We’ve got a Discord where we talk [to our fans] about fashion and music and it just feels like a group chat.”

Despite being siblings, Nyrobi and Chaya have opposite energies, the former’s brassy confidence contrasted by the latter’s quieter but no less steely demeanour. Nonetheless, it means there’ll be at least one person onstage that every person in the crowd can identify with.

“I feel like Nyrobi’s confidence has rubbed off on me,” Chaya says. “For our first performance, I was so nervous, but I enjoyed myself, and it’s grown from there.”

“I’ve always been a really outgoing person,” Nyrobi adds. “But because of certain social norms, I didn’t feel I could always be myself. Onstage, I feel so free, especially when I have my afro out. That’s when I feel complete.”

ALT BLK ERA appear at Download Festival on June 15 – get your tickets here. This article originally appeared in the spring issue of the magazine.

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