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Local Action is proud to present Daughters, the debut album by Jennifer Walton.

Walton is a beloved figure across various sectors of the alternative music underground. Outside of her own music and soundtrack work, she has been a live drummer for Kero Kero Bonito, collaborates with Sarah Midori Perry on the pair’s Cryalot project, has remixed Metronomy and worked with Iceboy Violet, BABii and more. She also makes music and DJs with close friends aya and 96 Back under the name Microplastics, and recently contributed to London collective caroline’s acclaimed caroline 2 album.

The first seeds of Walton’s debut album were sowed during touring North America in 2018, where whilst ticking off life-long music goals, Walton’s father was dying of cancer. Grief is a constant presence throughout Daughters, and specifically the surreal nature of having to process it amongst a blur of airports, flight connections, hotel rooms and battles for stolen medication with the American healthcare system. Strip malls, drug deals, panic attacks; the artificiality of downtown American city districts dovetailing with reality in its most brutal form. Miss America for a day while life is changed forever.

Weaving between real life diary entries, travelogue-style storytelling, imagery that ranges from mechanical to religious and a scattering of fiction (though we are obliged to mention that ‘Shelly’ is based on a true story), Daughters climaxes with the staggering run of ‘Saints’, ‘Miss America’ and its title track. Sampling unattended machines harmonising bleeps into the void in a London hospital ward, ‘Saints’ narrates Walton taking her father to and from cancer research trials, “sat, hunched and sick in the concourse as minutes became hours”. And to be very real for a moment, Jen is a friend, and first hearing the ‘Miss America’ demo is up there with the most emotional moments we’ve had in 15 years of running this record label.

Finished in London across the second half of 2024, Daughters features musical contributions from some of the closest friends and collaborators that Walton has made in her time as a musician: aya (who also mixed the album), Daniel S. Evans, Joshua Barfood and Nick Granata (all of Shovel Dance), Alex McKenzie (of caroline and Shovel Dance), Aga Ujma and Bob Lockwood.

Heavee is a Queer Chicagoan DJ & producer with a long history in footwork. His 2022 'Audio Assault' EP on Hyperdub showcased synth-driven, melodic footwork, but ‘Unleash’ goes much further into audio world-building, with a fresh, spongy and citrus-y sound palette and rich, bright chord sequences.

It's minimal, airy, balancing light and dark, sometimes breezy and sometimes clinical. Heavee works simultaneously outside and inside the box, rebuilding footwork's framework and vibe to his own unique specification. Rhythmically, it's dance floor ready, using footwork's 160 template as a springboard for building new drum sounds to express these rhythms, and draws from R&B, rap, jazz and grime, with a sprinkling of bitter-sweet vintage Detroit techno.

‘Unleash’ takes footwork’s “eats all” approach to music and leads it in a fresh direction with a freedom of spirit. It's a strong addition to the footwork cannon and shows that experiments in dance music can be fun.

Like a nervous amalgam of Death Grips' blown out bass frequencies, This Heat's jittery spasms, and Young Widows' imposing oratory, DITZ have created a sound that's equally suited for degraded dance floor gyrations and forward- thinking hardcore shows. At times a blurry tirade against invasive social media and at other times a celebration of cheap rolling tobacco, "Riverstone" was crafted while the band was on tour and deep in the delirium of road fatigue as an ode to the
hallucinatory spirit of their exhaustion. "Riverstone" by DITZ is available today on all digital platforms.

DITZ singer Cal Francis explains, "We wrote this track on a day off on our July tour. Caleb had recently bought this sub phatty and had taken it with him so we were trying to find anyway to make it fit in a track. I think we were listening to lots of Death Grips and hardcore that week. The lyrics were related to whatever we were talking shit about that day. Dirt cheap baccy and annoying invasive TikToks.
It's hard to recall."