On the Rise
404 Guild

404 Guild is a rejection of everything we’ve come to expect. To define something is to contain it – and anything that is contained is, by genre or by name, is limited. “Boundless”, is the word to describe this South London group, where every descriptor feels wrong; “band”, or even “collective” doesn’t quite stick – too small, too tight-fitted, for what they represent. “Family” is what they prefer, and they wear it well.

404 Guild are Bathwater, Devenny, Eliot and Sonny. Between them, they delve into a range of influences from industrial electronica, hip-hop, punk and soul – to name but a few. Since their emergence in 2019 with their back-to-back EPs, Guild One and Guild Two: Forever, the four of them have collaborated together as a unit. But it wasn’t always this way. This year, they’re taking it back to square one. “We started off as different factions, almost,” Brendon, who goes by the alias Bathwater, explains. “We were doing separate projects as duos and threes, but when we moved to London with the intention of doing shows together, it became more of a collective thing. It evolved into us developing this unique sound when we’re all together which doesn’t sound like one of us alone.”

The Guild thrive on the freedom to experiment, searching for that particular alchemy when certain members come together. Underneath the banner of 404 Guild, the group have branched off into two factions: Devenny 404, uniting the distinct production talents of Bathwater, with the vocals and lyricism of Devenny; and Elison 404, and aptly named partnership between Eliot and Sonny. The sonic directions these duos take sprawl apart, tapping into their individual styles and choices, but there is always this sense that no matter how far they stray apart from each other, there is always an overlap that binds them together.

“I think the coolest thing about it is that it’s a continuous stream of music,” Devenny explains. “I think having that aspect to music is a freedom – total freedom. We have this freedom to create without having to question anything. It was just a natural sort of thing when we first got together, because we all had a mutual understanding and an interest in what each individual was doing. It’s nice to do it in these little sub-genres, so then you can hit a checkpoint to then come back together.”

“There are so many different sounds in the Guild as a whole – I think it’s hard to put your finger on what we are. I don’t know if we’d have it any other way.” - Devenny

It can’t be said that 404 Guild are greater than the sum of their parts – for them, it’s not about that. It’s about dissecting these parts and fusing certain ones together, setting off unpredictable chain reactions. “It’s like feeding the Guild machine, isn’t it?” Sonny says. “Spread, and then return.” If one member isn’t there, the house of cards doesn’t collapse.

For a group with a strong aesthetic drive, inspired in equal weight by The X-Files as it is Stanley Kubrick, they are not fussed by semantics. “There are so many different sounds in the Guild as a whole – I think it’s hard to put your finger on what we are. I don’t know if we’d have it any other way,” Devenny says. “A lot of the stuff that I enjoy and challenges me is the stuff you can’t quite put your finger on.”

Since the Guild’s new resolve to splinter off into their components, Elison 404 – or, otherwise known as Elison Research Group - are the first to release a complete body of work, Pebbledash. The pair describe themselves as ‘a dedicated team of hauntologists, field researchers, and emotional archivists at the forefront of their respective fields, pushing the boundaries of spiritual tech and four-dimensional cartography.’ They don’t make music – they make ‘science-fiction’.

Eliot tries to clear up their murky origin story. “When we were living together last year, we had this huge archive of all this music, and we thought, ‘We need to stop making stuff. We need to go back and actually go through this.’” The process of archiving their chaotic web of music under the folder ‘Elison’ on a hard drive naturally gained the name ‘Elison Research’. “It became this sort of jokey idea about it being this weird, ambiguous sort of science start-up – you know, like one of those creepy companies funded in mysterious ways, and no one quite knows what they do. I think it was a fun way to conceptualise a lot of long-running, subconscious aesthetics that we’re into. All the artwork ended up becoming this filing cabinet sort of thing, which was how we’d imagined it – a phrase Sonny started using was ‘emotional archiving’.”

“There’s a side to us that’s just really good at hoarding music,” Sonny tells me. “The research was literal: trying all the different genres we liked. I think all of us have been kind of obsessed with having our own secret society, and this is just a branch of that.” Rather than calling themselves something as mundane as a ‘band’, they preferred to toy with the idea of starting a ‘company’, or an ‘observatory’. “We’re basically just a bunch of nerds,” Eliot admits. “404 Guild is like an RPG game. Guild is the main quest, and all these other things are side quests we have to complete so we can become the fullest Guild. And then, and the end… we’re Dragonborn.” Between the group’s feverish discussions about Season 4 of X-Files, and the end goal to become creatures from Dungeons & Dragons shaped by draconic gods, their imaginations are as wild as the music itself.

"Mental health is something that everyone struggles with. If we can help people feel more open to talk, that’s the dream." - Eliot

Jamie Oborne, CEO of their record label, Dirty Hit (The 1975), describes 404 Guild as “one of the best live acts in the world”. Their shows have taken on an almost mythical status, with the group’s livewire energy bringing both an intensity, and uncontrollable ferocity to their performances. Search for 404 Guild, and one of the first image results is one of Eliot: his forehead bleeding, his eyes full of mania. Pebbledash, however, shows a different side to the Guild.

“It’s a bit more tender; more gentle,” Eliot explains. “I think a lot of what people know of us from is the live shows, which are always super intense and often quite heavy. The stuff we’ve done for Pebbledash was something we were always doing, but it was just harder to showcase. I’m quite excited to see what people make of it, because I think it might not sound what people think it’s going to sound like.”

Sonny adds, “I think, lyrically, there’s an element of letting our guard down a bit. There has always been this shared Guild world, and this shared personal myth that we’ve all built together. But I think with this, we’re dropping that a little bit, and allowing ourselves to be a little more vulnerable, maybe?”

This urge to wear their hearts on their sleeve is a natural one, summed up from teeth-gritted bravery. 404 Guild were once a family of five. Mina, with her soulful voice as prone to bouts of strength as those of fragility, added sobering moments of vulnerability between her bandmates’ hip-hop and punk-inspired approaches. Their most popular song so far, “Blind Spot” was Mina’s. In May 2019, she took her own life. But since the beginning, 404 Guild have been open about their struggles with mental health in their lyrics.

“It’s something that everyone struggles with. If we can help people feel more open to talk, that’s the dream,” Eliot says. “Everyone’s entitled to handle it on their own terms and in their own time, but it’s only recently that, on a bigger level in society, it’s even being acknowledged or discussed as a real thing – or even as something that affects everyone. It’s still so taboo to talk about; it’s still so hard to get help. An open dialogue is really important. Hearing other people’s music that has touched on it has been a huge source of comfort and reassurance when I’ve been in bad places. It makes me feel like I’m not the only one. Why are so many young people so fucking sad?” he asks. “I imagine it’s a broader symptom of how our society is run, but it’s really quite distressing. Sorry, I’m getting a bit dark.”

“It’s important, though.” Sonny says. “It’s important. It’s a systemic thing, isn’t it?” The group are confessional to the last about their personal demons. Their candid approach to taboo subjects is refreshing and important, but the heavy silences at the mention of Mina show that her loss is something they’re still coming to terms with every day; speaking about her was something only they could volunteer to do. But there is no need when the music speaks for itself: “You went past without making a call / And I’ll see you the day that I die / Got your words attached to my wall / Always there in the back of my mind / And I got your hurt attached to my heart / Got your songs attached to my soul / So joy, not fear right now.”

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‘Joy, not fear’ is the mantra of one of Pebbledash’s forerunning singles, “Perfect Dark”. They hold it close to them like a lucky talisman to get them through the darkest times. “It was almost this bittersweet joke between us,” Eliot explains. “It felt almost ludicrous to hold onto such dumb hope when it was the lowest it had ever been. It almost became this funny sort of thing, and then it got to the point of making the song and it started to become real.” Devenny interprets it as, “You’re attempting the joy, but having the fear regardless.”

Bringing their friend Lara Laeverenz onto the track, bringing an ethereal lightness to their confessional spoken-word raps, reminded them that there was joy in the world. She is credited as both a singer and ‘spiritual guide’. A member of a group of artists going by the name Bloat Collective, as well as the vocal harmony group Woom, Laeverenz’s influence on the Pebbledash is something Eliot and Sonny are careful not to understate. She features on another track on the record, “Feel Your Presence”, acting as a major contributor to the entire album. “Every time she’d come to the studio, she’d always add something and give us so much perspective on the thing. She’s one of the best humans I know,” Eliot says.

"When you’re like family, it’s more than work – it’s love...we want it to be a very inclusive and loving place that people can seek out.” - Sonny

It is friendship, rather than any genre or branding, that define 404 Guild. “I think that comes first, prior to music,” Sonny says. “When you’re like family, it’s more than work – it’s love.” The Guild like to refer to their work as a ‘family affair’, where there’s no pressure to perform; talking every day isn’t necessary for them to feel important to each other. It’s a fact – one of the few things that are certain no matter what. Devenny explains, “When you have a group of best friends or a group of people that really love and cherish each other, you’re able to go and do your own thing, but there’s always a home to come back to. The whole point of the Guild is that we want people to come and join this family. It’s a community thing. If you come to our show or listen to our music, you’re involved in some way. It’s not just about us – it’s about everyone. We want it to be a very inclusive and loving place that people can seek out.”

The release of Pebbledash has encouraged Devenny to up his game for his own side-project. “I genuinely get inspired all the time,” Devenny (pictured above) says. “That’s why having a group like 404 Guild is so special. I get to learn from all of my favourite artists all the time.” Having grown up together, it pushes a sense of healthy competition. “We all thrive off it,” he continues. “We all gain something from it because it feeds back to the core of what 404 Guild is. That’s why our side projects are so important: it builds the hunger, the competition, and then you come back and make something together as a whole again. It’s what it was always supposed to be.”

With Elison 404 making a foray into ghost-like, ethereal sounds and industrial electronica, Devenny 404 is innovating hip-hop. Releasing a trio of tracks, “Pause”, “Ice” and “Running Man”, theirs is a triple threat of infectious, off-kilter beats set to Devenny’s lyrically incisive verses. It’s distinctly British in sound, with the ferocity of grime, yet it operates way beyond its boundaries.

While Devenny is not ready to release a body of work yet, he has more than a few projects in his arsenal. So many, in fact, that they’re hard to keep track of. Upcoming record, Paradise Drive, is alluded to in the cryptic visualisers for Devenny 404's singles. “Apart from the Guild stuff as a whole,” Devenny says, “I don’t think, on a personal level - as something I’ve written on my own in terms of lyrics and stuff – I don’t think I’ve ever felt as proud of something like I am with this before.”

Usually, Devenny's lyrics are as coded as the music videos that accompany them, raising more questions than answers. “On Paradise Drive, I feel that I’ve decoded a lot of stuff. It’s definitely not as coded as it used to be. I used to find it difficult to write as honestly as I want to, but as I’ve grown into myself and progressed a bit more as a songwriter, I feel more able to hit more topics and be a bit more blunt about the way I’m feeling. But a lot of my favourite pieces of art come from those sorts of situations where you have to work it out a little. It doesn’t need to be spoon-fed sometimes,” Devenny explains.

"I don’t want to be the dark version of myself, or a dark artist, believing that if I want to make my music sound a certain way that I have to take a certain kind of drug.” - Devenny

“Ice”, a primal track with a skittish, neurotic beat touches on experiences he has never vocalised in his songs to plainly before. “I’ve always felt the need to kind of seek others to tell them how I feel, for better or for worse,” he says. “When I came up to London with all of these guys, I kind of lost myself a little bit.” He got swept up in a lifestyle of experimenting with drugs. “We were all having fun, and then as other people stopped, I kind of continued.” It got to the point where it wasn’t something he indulged in socially – he was doing it alone. “I couldn’t see the problem with it even though people were looking at me from afar, or taking me to the side and being like, ‘Are you good?’. It took me a while to understand how it was negatively affecting me.”

He was convincing himself that everything was fine, as long as he could still make music. ‘But it would be me who was slumped over somewhere, trying to make music at an ungodly time, trying to piece together something that I thought sounded really good, but didn’t have any soul in it. It came from a place I don’t really want to be making music from. I don’t want to be the dark version of myself, or a dark artist, believing that if I want to make my music sound a certain way that I have to take a certain kind of drug. If anything,” Devenny says, “I like being sober when I make music.”

“I feel like music kind of helped me just refocus. What also helped me was obviously having these guys in my life. Watching how they worked hard, and watching how they kind of manifested their ideas, and realising that if I kept going down a certain path, I might not be able to be here, or make music anymore. Year by year, the older I get, the music becomes more important to me, which is a really lovely thing. But yeah, that's kind of my relationship with that. With ‘Ice’, it's me addressing bits and pieces - still kind of coded - but me trying to get it all off my chest. I do make music for myself, but I also like the idea of someone listening to it out there and kind of taking it on board for themselves, as well. So ‘Ice’ was - not a cry for help - but it was more of like releasing it off my chest in the best way I knew how. The visualiser I released kind of reflects that kind of walking down and endless path, trying to figure it out. I'm happy to say I'm definitely out of that sort of space now. I'm doing the best I can, which I'm very happy about.”

Devenny 404 has a strong visual thread that links all his music videos. The visualisers speak volumes by saying very little. The music video for “Ice” is by far his most mysterious, harking back to Devenny’s tendency to obscure meaning, leaving a trail of questions like breadcrumbs throughout. Phrases with seemingly no meaning flash onto the screen. “I won’t give it away, because they all overarch into future projects and how they will all link together,” he says elusively.

Many of the projects he refers to were his lifeblood when Bathwater’s family housed him after a bout of homelessness. During those three months, toying with music became something more serious. It was at this time when the Guild were still based in Eastbourne that Devenny started going to Eliot’s shed, which was a sort of creative hive for people making music. These early projects, Regrowth and Reform, were steppingstones to a larger picture. “They were the training missions,” Bathwater explains. “I don’t think we’ll release them to be honest.” But World One, the project they fed into, is a different story.

"I feel a real affinity with the pain and beauty in their music. Some artists create because they want to, others because they have to – 404 Guild is the latter.” - Jamie Oborne, Dirty Hit founder

“World One: that will get finished,” Devenny insists. “Even listening back to it now, the ideas were very strong there. It’s something I think we both feel quite connected to, so we’ll definitely work on it, especially having just finished Paradise Drive, and feeling very strongly about that record. They both exist in the same world, in my opinion. I love anything that sounds organic live, and both have a lot of orchestral pieces.” World One is just a working title, though, they insist. It’s as prone to evolution as anything else they make, still suspended in a sort of limbo of blossoming, yet unfinished ideas.

It took a particular kind of label to trust this kind of vision. 404 Guild came onto Dirty Hit founder Jamie Oborne’s radar after their future labelmates, Wolf Alice, sent him their track “Run It Up”. Oborne tells me, “I don’t think I have ever felt a more emotionally charged performance on a vocal. I instantly fell in love with their uncompromising attitude toward art and creation. I feel a real affinity with the pain and beauty in their music. Some artists create because they want to, others because they have to – 404 Guild is the latter.”

The end goal for 404 Guild ranges from something as simple as to just live comfortably and play an infinite amount of shows, to dreams of untold stardom and “driving a Tesla into a river just to practise escaping.” But the bottom line is this: “All my friends are gonna make it.” It’s because they’re friends that 404 Guild is a safe place to escape to. It’s because they’re friends that weaknesses are as welcome as any strength. Here, your friends are your family. In like a lion… out like a lamb.