Bristol, UK · post-punk · art-pop

Billy Nomates

2 festivals played

Tor Maries alone with a drum machine and a scalpel — deadpan, half-sung dispatches on class and burnout that swing from snarl to heartbreak inside a single verse.

Billy Nomates is the recording name of Tor Maries, a musician based in Bristol who grew up in the English Midlands. She began the project after years in bands, taking the name from the schoolyard insult and building tracks largely by herself — drum machine patterns, blunt basslines and cheap-sounding synths under vocals that sit somewhere between speech and singing. Her self-titled debut appeared on Invada, the label run by Portishead's Geoff Barrow, and was followed by the album CACTI.

She is known for performing alone on stage, singing and moving to pre-recorded backing rather than fronting a band, and for lyrics that deal with work, money, small towns and self-doubt in flat, specific language. She also guested on Sleaford Mods' "Mork n Mindy", which introduced her to a wider audience.

post-punkart-pop