Ultimate Thunder: Leeds band on supporting Yard Act at Millennium Square, Tim Burgess inviting them to Kendal Calling and the need for funding

He’s not wrong. The title could have come straight out of the classic rock catalogue next to AC/DC or Motörhead. Their music, though, is rather different.

Ultimate Thunder are: Matthew Watson (vocals), Scott Anderson (drums), Alex Sykes (keyboard and synth), John Densley (percussion and synth), Kenneth Stainburn (bass) and James Heselwood (the band’s mentor, guide and guitarist).

All but one of the band’s members have a learning disability and complex needs but, after a year when it nearly “fell to bits”, are preparing to play their biggest gigs to date: a show on Friday at the Kendal Calling festival, taken up at the invitation of Tim Burgess, frontman of The Charlatans, and then a support slot for fellow Leeds band Yard Act at their appearance in the city’s Millennium Square on Saturday.

It follows their latest album, A Spider Will Come To Eat Your Flesh, released in May and named after one of six tracks recorded, engineered and produced by James Mabbett, who alongside Heselwood co-manages the band. Other tracks include We Paid For Your Money, Change Yer Burger and I’ve Got No Bees In Your House (for which a very entertaining music video directed by Paul Morricone can be seen on YouTube) – titles taken from Matthew’s surreal, stream-of-consciousness lyrics.

The vocalist was introduced to the band during a music workshop. “We’d just lost our singer and I heard Matthew and was like, oh, we need him in the band next week,” says Heselwood. “We sorted it out and he came down from there on.”

While their sound is difficult to fit into a particular genre, it is bass-led and there’s a handy description on their Bandcamp webpage: “Post experimental, post punk, post disco, post band.” For Mabbett, it’s “The Fall meets Hawkwind”. Comparisons to the post punk pioneers are understandable, although they are not necessarily the intention.

Heselwood says: “People are always comparing Matthew to (The Fall’s late frontman) Mark E Smith, but I’m pretty certain Matthew’s never heard Mark E Smith.

“I don’t think he’d really like (The Fall) - but he loves making this style of music.”

Kenneth, a fan of 60s and 70s music, sees them as more of a psychedelia band.

They rehearse and record in their space for about five hours every Monday and the music happens organically, built from a particular aural prompt or motif. When it comes to live performance, they improvise.

Heselwood says: “We tried having a certain riff or a theme and it gets in the way, actually, so it's better to just just go from that first sound and then take it from there. I'm letting Kenneth lead it in a way now, I used to come in with a riff and everyone would join in. Now Kenneth comes in with a riff and I join in, which I like, we’ve switched over a bit. Let the bass dominate and then everybody else follows on.”

Matthew, meanwhile, will often repeat a guitar riff with words.

The band is all about highlighting the talent and creativity of performers with learning disabilities, but with that comes extra considerations and funding models. It started in 2013 after Leeds-based charity People In Action called Heselwood to form the group, which started gigging across Leeds, Wakefield and Bradford. Following numerous changes, the band began to work officially with Leeds arts charity Pyramid in 2017, and the current line-up made their live debut at the city’s DIY space Wharf Chambers in 2019, with a self-titled debut album released in 2022.

However, things went a little awry earlier this year. They had benefited from financing courtesy of Arts Council England and Leeds Inspired, supported by Pyramid, but that block of funding ended and they were struggling to find other options - until a crowdfunding campaign proved to be a temporary lifeline. “It nearly just fell to bits, it really did,” says Heselwood. “And within a matter of a few days, it turned around because we set this GoFundMe up, which was really quite unbelievable. But now that's not going to last forever. We'd love to get corporate sponsorship or something, someone to back this band, to get behind it and be like: ‘I really like what you're doing, here's some money, just so you don't have to worry about filling in funding bids all the time’.”

The crowdfunder led to the band appearing on ITV News, BBC Breakfast, Look North and Radio Leeds, while they attracted support from Yard Act, beloved Leeds venue The Brudenell Social Club and Burgess. It reached over £20,000 of a £30,000 target, but Heselwood says that’s almost gone now - everyday costs such as their own pay, rehearsal space and equipment all quickly add up.

As Mabbett says, there's “a lot of competition - because there's no money, everyone's applying for grants”. He adds: “Certainly, gigs are a super extra cost, really, because (for us) it's far more than just jumping in a car and driving to the gig. Everybody has their own PAs who come with them. At Kendal Calling, they're booking hotels for us to stay over and that would put off quite a lot of festivals, that extra expense, for a band at this level anyway. It's a lot more to think about and a lot more to organise, and to get people on side, willing to support in that way, that's the tricky bit.”

There is excitement for the upcoming set of gigs, though, and members are asked about which dream locations they’d like to play in the future. Kenneth certainly likes the idea of performing over in Florida.

Alex? “The garden shed.”

Millennium Square here they come.

To hear Ultimate Thunder’s music, released by Easy Listening Records, visit: ultimatethunder.bandcamp.com