Words: Garrin Faturrahman
Image: Daisy Ayscough and Tomos Ayscough

What does it take to start anew, especially in the musicscape? If such is a question in your head as you take the next step in your music career (or just music-making, perhaps), then there’s one person that you may look at as a reference: Cameron Picton, who you might’ve known as one of the guys over at black midi, with his new band, My New Band Believe.

Ahead of the band’s debut album release (which will drop on April 10 2026), we had an online interview with the frontman himself, Cameron Picton, to chat briefly about the Windmill and greater London music scene, what he found most comfortable about his current band, and tips on pulling through in the current music industry.

Remembering (which, I personally think, is) the heyday of post-Brexitcore music: the 2022–2023. Thankfully, Indonesia got its fair share of the fun during Joyland Festival Bali 2023. How are things right now, in said scene?

Well, I don’t think any of us in London would identify with post-Brexit as a term, just because what Brexit is and when Brexit was, is like a slightly contentious thing or like a slightly not solid thing. I think that the type of music that you’re referring to would probably be, like, music that came out of the Windmill from 2017 onwards. But even then, like there’s been some kind of community or music scene at the Windmill for like 25 years.

So it’s complicated. But I guess, specifically referring to the Windmill, I don’t feel like I feel massively on top of what’s happening beyond like, kind of like Tim Perry, the guy who runs the windmill, telling me every so often what the good bands playing are. But, yeah, I feel like it’s changed, and since COVID, a lot of new bands have come and a lot of the bands that were playing around before have started playing less because they’ve got bigger, or got older.

I went to Windmill last December, witnessed University and Bathing Suits in their full glory. Seems like said live house is ground zero for current sounds of the British music scene. What’s your say about that?

I think it’s probably the ground zero of a specific type of thing. But even then, all of that draws on influences that aren’t really necessarily originated from the Windmill. I think the Windmill was kind of like the music that was around there when I was a late teenager was kind of like updating or like a revival of older genres. And then that itself kind of mutated over the years.

I would say there’s no real ground zero for music culture in London, because it’s so spread out and it’s part of this interconnected community. So I don’t think any one venue can lay claim to that as much, you know? I think that it would do a disservice to lots of other venues in London to say that it’s just the Windmill that has a good and thriving music scene.

I have a sort of sentimental attachment to the Windmill because it’s where I spent a lot of my teenage years. 

That’s a good point. May I know the other venues that are worthy of mention?

Well, there’s the one that is, like, similarly having a moment that maybe the Windmill had a few years ago is like Cafe OTO because Daniel Blumberg won the Oscar for his score for The Brutalist (2024) and shouted it out and he plays there a lot, and a lot of those people are in the free improvisation scene or who played on that score.

And there’s also, you know, bands like caroline, Shovel Dance Collective, Kiran Leonard, that kind of South East London-based world of music, which aren’t really associated with the Windmill. Some of them have never played there. I think they don’t necessarily have any one venue that they’re sort of associated with.

So, yeah, there’s plenty of things going on. There’s one that’s probably also being well documented, there’s the whole kind of like London jazz world that’s got a particular sound, which is similarly like how the Windmill was kind of popular in the late 2010s–early 2020s, and it’s now evolved and changed, and people are doing different things.

This might be a foreseeable question: If I had a dime for every time a post-Brexitcore musician goes their own way and makes a jazz-rock-samba-fusion release, I’d have two. May I hear which do you find yourself best as a musician – in the ever-chaotic black midi, or in My New Band Believe?

Well, I’ve really enjoyed working on all the new music that I’ve been doing since the breakup of the band, and it’s been really rewarding and doesn’t feel like there are necessarily any boundaries in terms of what the band can do or be, which is really exciting.

I’m really enjoying working in this mode where the band is kind of like a revolving group of musicians that come in and play. And I think that, eventually, it would be nice for it to solidify into a more solid or consistent group of people, and then kind of collaborate on a record with those people and say, ‘OK, for one album, we’re a proper band and then see what happens.’

But for now, I’m really enjoying playing with all these different musicians in London. We all have something different to say and, you know, exploring this idea that everybody should be able to contribute to the band in some way, in a positive way. So that’s what I’m enjoying at the moment. 

With that said, if you were to put your current and past music side-by-side, would you put them together?

When black midi broke up, a lot of the songs that I kind of had written with the band in mind, I scrapped.

And so all of the new songs that I wrote since then, some of the new songs have been scrapped as well, but a lot of the songs that I wrote since then, came onto this album.

So, nothing on this record was written with black midi in mind, or initially written with or for black midi to play or anything like that.

With regards to physical releases getting a comeback, holding a tour getting more and more expensive, to the unjust digital streaming platform royalty: As someone who’s starting their new band, how would you navigate the current music industry?

I’d say I’m very lucky in that my previous band did very well, and was respected enough among musicians that, most of the time, when I’ve asked people that I thought would never want to play or wouldn’t be interested in playing in the group to play, they’ve most of the time said yes (and if they said no, it’s just because they’re not, like, physically got a clash or something). So it’s been, that’s been nice.

And also it’s good because, like I said, with the Windmill, there’s like a dedicated audience, which I’m obviously extremely grateful for. Because it kind of means that a project like this, in terms of the way it’s working now with different people playing every show and stuff, is not really like a financially viable thing in terms of making a living—and not that like, music necessarily should be something where like you have a right to, you know, yeah, but obviously it has to be viable.

And, in terms of releasing music and streaming services, I’ve played around with different ways of releasing music. And, Bandcamp, I’ve released CDs on Bandcamp that haven’t been available elsewhere, and that paid for my studio for like a year.

But, I think there’s only so much growth that you can get out of it. Like, I kind of started to experience diminishing returns with it, and I think that, unfortunately, in order to progress, you have to play the game a little bit with streaming services, especially like starting a new project.

There’s not that many artists that can—as much as they say that they don’t like streaming services, and as much as the model is broken, it’s hard to take the step and actually leave without really taking a hit in terms of your visibility, which is pretty tough.

Also, I don’t really have a choice, to be honest. As much as I kind of am also happy to play the game, if you’re on a record label that’s got a proper deal, like a Beggars label or something, it’s got to be on streaming services.