If Charli XCX is 2024’s CEO of the club with her recent release Brat, then Bad With Phones could be the chairman of the comedown. His newly released debut album , Crash, blurs genres with the trippy haze of after-hours: lead single Don’t Talk to Me is a jerky slice of LCD-ish dance-punk, where he’s avoiding chatty people at a party while “really high on shrooms”. Devils deploys the drowsy, detuned guitars so beloved of south London indie artists; Monica Too sounds like the Weeknd put through a mangler.
Bad With Phones is the alias of Manny T Deroy, AKA Emmanuel Folorunso, a Deptford-born bassist and producer who has been releasing songs since 2018. His father was a preacher, while his older brothers played in the church band, and there are references to his Pentecostal upbringing among his sing-raps. But Deroy’s sound is decidedly genre-agnostic, a mishmash of weirdo rap, trap, R&B, indie and arch storytelling. With his current messy pink wig – surely a nod to Tyler, the Creator’s smooth Igor-era blond bob – Deroy looks straight out of the pages of mid-2000s nu-rave magazine Super Super.
Despite playing with characters, Crash comes from real-life events. Deroy took a two-year hiatus from music after a serious car accident while on holiday in Lanzarote. He and his then-girlfriend escaped unscathed, and the record it inspired has an arc of redemption as he weaves together tales of late-night debauchery. A singular, brilliantly eccentric talent.
Crash is out now on Don’t Sleep
