multiscreen’s north star? The thing that will mean everything’s been worth it? “Collab with Benson Boone,” offers Louis Ravens, one half of the enigmatic music duo (though he’s perhaps better known as the guy who did an impression of Iris Law eating a mango). The other half is anonymous. He doesn’t want to go into why that is, but given his “disguise” for our shoot is a pair of sunglasses, I’m not sure how long it’ll last. Together, they form multiscreen, a musical project which aims to find the beauty in all the online brain rot that Ravens has made his bread and butter.

The few hours I get with multiscreen (Ravens has got a gig vox-popping at RALLY Festival) are a trip down memory lane. Not only do Ravens and I go back, but we’re shooting around my old stomping ground: Harringay Green Lanes. It’s a semi-ironic backdrop – multiscreen have greenlit the retail park and chintzy Turkish restaurants down the main strip, but have ruled out the #blokecore boozers and greasy spoons that Ravens usually takes the piss out of. “Green Lanes is chaotic, but continental,” Ravens drawls. “I feel like I’m on the continent.” 

It’s where the duo reside and make music. Their new studio is a “far cry from the previous one,” Ravens tells me. “Now we’re with the crusties from the warehouse district.” Naturally, Ravens loves a bit of online-adjacent jargon, dropping references to not just “crusties” and Benson Boone, but Andy Goodwin of “Fred Perry Girl” fame. It’s not lost on him when I quip that their seven-minute-long debut single “that’s life” could be compared to Yungblud’s “Hello Heaven, Hello” — the latter is ten minutes long. Is it a bit of a “fuck you” putting out a song that long? “I suppose,” Ravens muses. “But that is kind of out of character for us. We are quite happy to be poppy and accessible.” 

‘Poppy’ or not, multiscreen isn’t the kind of thing you can just shill out via a barrage of TikToks. “that’s life”, which they released back in June, has flavours of Westerman in there, but it’s also singularly epic for a debut track. The song’s hefty intro – an ambient soundscape which builds into a synthy-cresendo – gives way to strings written and performed by Saya Barbaglia of Mary In The Junkyard. “Bless her, she has better things to do,” adds Ravens. 

The other half of the duo describes “that’s life” as being about “that age where you’re resentful that other people in your world are succeeding and you’re not.” “Don’t indulge my naive endeavour / I’m just gonna stay young forever,” sings Ravens before the song builds to an even more chaotic soundscape. That then comes to a halt and we’re left with just Barbaglia’s strings — it’s worthy of a film score. For all the song’s themes, it seems the lads of multiscreen are doing alright. I point this out to Ravens. “I’m succeeding as a silly fuck,” he says. “As a village idiot.” 

But multiscreen’s second single, “it’s hip to be dumb”, released today, exists in a whole different universe. Soundwise, it’s distinctly 80s, all processed, echoey vocals set atop layered drums and hypnotic keys. “My mum said it sounds like Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark,” Ravens tells me. Lyrically, it’s less subtle than its predecessor, though it’s more aligned with what you’d expect from multiscreen’s frontman. “Called my art queer / And the smoking area cheered,” he sings. Later, that’s switched out for new wave-esque sprechgesang. “Ironic Hemingway / Summers in Marseille,” he scorns as the song winds down. And unlike their seven-minute debut? “It’s only three minutes long,” adds the project’s anonymous half. 

It’s that old chestnut, though. The notion of what you’d ‘expect’ from the guy behind the @louisblooey moniker. Do the duo feel boxed in by that? “If anything, it made me more confident in writing lyrics,” Ravens explains. “While I don’t want to be ’Weird Al’ Yankovic, I think there are real advantages in writing lyrics that are satire or taking the piss out of something.” What surprises me, though, is how earnest they are about the whole thing. There are glimpses of that, anyway. The end goal? “Just to make fun tunes and provide more meaning to other people’s lives,” says Ravens. “And to build an army of ’screeners’.”

Below, in honour of multiscreen’s latest single, ”it’s hip to be dumb”, we dive speak to the satirical duo about how they met, their thoughts on vox-pops, and their favourite piece of brain rot. 

How did you guys meet?

Louis Ravens: We started dating first, actually. No, we went to school together. We weren’t hanging in the same circles, but we always had an affinity for each other. [The anonymous half of multiscreen] once wore a 1975 sweatshirt to school. 

Anonymous: It was a maroon sweatshirt with a big 1975 box logo. Louis was the only person who was like, that’s cool. Everyone else was like, what are you doing?

Louis Ravens: At the time I was a massive fan of The 1975. I was really happy to see a kindred spirit, because I mostly felt ashamed to be a fan. And then we’d probably play Call of Duty or Assassin’s Creed together. And then we went to uni together. But we were both trying to be smart boys, too scared of following our musical dreams. 

Anonymous: I used to play guitar, like, endlessly. Without much direction. I think it would be quite annoying as Lou was below me.

Louis Ravens: Figuratively and actually… Were you playing the guitar when we got robbed? 

Anonymous: Let’s not go there. 

When did you start multiscreen?

Anonymous: Three years ago? But I don’t think we actually made a decent tune for, like, a year. 

Louis Ravens: We didn’t know what it was for a long time. I used to make annoying club music, but I got bored. I still love club music, but I wanted to make music with someone else. I wanted to make some music that might be enjoyed by my friends potentially. 

How would you describe multiscreen’s sound?

Louis Ravens: Emo dance pop. No, it’s quite 80s, jangly pop. To be honest, for better or worse, we sometimes struggle to put ourselves in a box. We’re too brain-rotted. We have many influences from many places… So, we are going to be coming out with a grime song. 

Your debut track, ‘that’s life’, is seven-minutes long. It’s a bit like when Yungblud returned to music with his ten-minute number. 

Louis Ravens: The problem I have with that is when you listen to a great song you’re like, wow, I can hear that they’ve taken inspiration from that and that and that. Right? When Yungblud does it, it’s like, here’s the U2 song, here’s the Cure song, here’s the 1975 song… But no, the seven-minute thing was out of character for us. We are quite happy to be quite poppy and accessible. 

Speaking of someone like Yungblud, who perhaps retreads old ground, how do you go about making music that doesn’t do that? 

Anonymous: I think in production you can easily go down a wormhole of trying to make things sound like something else. You can go into it with too much of a reference. But if you try and do something as honest as possible, you’ll avoid it. Then again, we’re not using any crazy gear or anything. Our production is not going to easily fall into those traps. 

Louis Ravens: We’re wary of being nostalgic. But it’s one of things that you’re naturally predisposed to doing. Like drinking. It’s nice, but too much of it is bad. I don’t think ‘that’s life’ is nostalgic, but sometimes we do lean into an eighties world. We’re very paranoid about being nostalgic. We have this shared folder of Instagram posts called ‘alternative nostalgia porn’. They’re mainly from one account. We won’t name it, but it’s basically the Daily Mail showbiz sidebar for annoying people. 

Anonymous: It’s like, oh, remember when Tyler, the Creator and Frank Ocean had this photoshoot? And they were wearing Supreme? 

Louis Ravens: It’s, like, claiming its journalism, but really it just makes people go, ‘oh, that was so sick.’ 

Louis, as someone who professionally takes the piss out of things, is it hard doing something this earnest?

Louis Ravens: Sure, though not nearly as much as when I’ve had to be sincere or earnest on camera, just talking. Like, there’ve been times in the past where I’ve tried to be a music journalist on TikTok – recommending an album or something. I look back at that and it makes me cringe way more than hearing myself sing. I think it’s weirdly a nice buffer of some kind. 

Louis, what’s more satisfying: making music for multiscreen or doing adverts for Happy Tuesdays? Or vox-popping? 

Louis Ravens: I think vox-popping is the pit of modern culture… but doing it at an annoying music festival like RALLY will be fun. But in terms of multiscreen or Happy Tuesdays, it’s multiscreen every time. Obviously, multiscreen won’t plaster my face everywhere without my consent. Print that. 

Brain rot is, I guess, disposable. But what’s one piece of brain rot you’d put in a time capsule? 

Anonymous: I really love this off-road review of a truck. It’s, like, half-an-hour-long and they drive around all these muddy roads in the middle of nowhere in America. Then at one point they load a shit ton of bricks onto the back of it and just drive it as fast as they can across a field. Bricks are just cascading off. It’s so funny. 

Louis Ravens: I would say Nick Colletti Vine compilations. 

multiscreen’s latest single, “it’s hip to be dumb”, is out now.