After a handful of EPs, singles and countless memorable live sets, New York duo Club Eat have released their debut album Start, a masterful club-pop record featuring a series of playful and stripped-down dance tracks. Vocalist Ren G and producer Chicken plaster repetitive and minimalist lyrics over heavy synth lines, inventing another reality – a doll-like dream world that orbits around femininity, fucking, and having a good time. 

The duo’s sound is firmly rooted in dance music, but sonically finds itself somewhere between art pop and hyperpop, with a strong nostalgia for the mid-aughts. While their sound is referential, they bring their own futuristic and unique presence to the tracks through their vivid lyrics and live performance. “Come and pick me up I’m sick of staring at the wall/ Let’s do something stupid, I’m just waiting for the call,” vocalist Ren G sings in “Sad Song”. The vocals are flirtatious and assertive, yet still frivolous and playful over the pulsing baseline – for example, in “Surprise”, Ren asserts: “Everytime you come around I have a heart attack/ But I can’t complain, I love it, hope that you come back.”

The pair have been long-standing fixtures in New York City’s club scene. In fact, Club Eat began as a monthly party where the duo would DJ a mix of sceney sounds, as well as their own instrumental tracks to see what would stick: “We were kind of only thinking of it with regards to the party at first, and we would throw out the craziest stuff. We started to combine elements of pop with the club tracks we were making, and then it sort of just took form,” they explain.

Playing live shows has been a huge part of the process in making their new album, and the pair will often test out their new tracks during performances. “In many ways, Start is an album designed specifically for live performance,” they elaborate. When asked about the transition from club night to artists, Ren G tells me: “I told Chicken I wanted to start singing and it just started happening. And I would say really during the pandemic was when the vocal side of our music really started to take shape.” Since then, the pair have swiftly gone from playing at local clubs and venues like Rash (rumoured to reopen this summer) to performing at the Celine after-party last year, so clearly they’re doing something right.

Below, the duo take us down their favourite internet rabbit holes, from Milos Forman’s Amadeus to a “very American” Insta page and a sacrificial conspiracy theory that *allegedly* kickstarted Lady Gaga’s music career.

FAVE INSTAGRAM: @914ny

Club Eat: @914NY is an artist and clothing designer based in upstate New York that we’ve been following for a while. He does these really sick illustrations that he puts on clothing and other stuff. He does these logos depicting weapons and war. It’s very American. It’s kind of like this multimedia page with similar videos. He’ll write these philosophies and histories about society or capitalism or the art world that really get a bitch thinking. I always leave his page feeling inspired.

FAVE MOVIE: AMADEUS

Club Eat: Currently it would have to be Amadeus by Milos Forman. It’s a movie about the epic life and career of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart through the eyes of Antonio Salieri, who was another composer at that time. He was older than him and really admired him from afar, and was extremely jealous. The costumes are amazing, as well as the actual music itself, the operas, and the earlier non-government commissioned plays. They did two on the side that they show… Truly no one did it like Mozart. It’s an incredible movie, you have to watch it.

FAVE SONG: ‘UPSIDE DOWN’

Club Eat: “Upside Down” by the A*Teens. They’re a Swedish teen pop group that originally started as an ABBA tribute band. This was their breakout single after ditching the covers and I can’t get it out of my head! It was maybe one of the best pop songs ever? They haven’t made music since like 2001… I had a copy of the CD growing up but I revisited it recently. I love to play it during my live sets. The first song is called “Upside Down” and it’s just such an ear worm and it’s so well produced. I love it, it sounds insane at the club too. I hope to make a song this good one day.

FAVE CONSPIRACY THEORY: LINA MORGANA SACRIFICES

Club Eat: I’ve gone into a few rabbit holes on YouTube. Most of my favorite ones are music industry or celebrity-related. My favourite would probably be Lina Morgana. She was an up-and-coming pop star that was allegedly sacrificed by Lady Gaga to jump start her career. The YouTube doc explains how the “Paparazzi” music video makes references to her death – it's just super crazy. If anything with conspiracies for me, even if I believe them or not, I just love watching the videos and seeing how people will find these dualities between an artist’s work and some fucked up or crazy thing that happened.

Club Eat’s Start is out now