Music

I’ve played and toured internationally in DIY punk bands Sauna Youth, Feature, Monotony, Gold Foil and Mind Jail as both a drummer and a vocalist. I’ve also been a guest vocalist on records and during live performances for the bands Fucked Up, Pissed Jeans, Human Hair and Buttonhead. I sometimes play drums in a Ramones covers band called The Ranomes.

I started playing in bands while in my first year at university at Goldsmiths, co-forming Run Red Riding Hood (2009) and joining King and the Olive Fields shortly after (2010). I joined Sauna Youth in 2011 while living in Brighton, and we played together till 2018, recording three albums and touring internationally. In 2014, we briefly paused Sauna Youth to form Monotony together by swapping instruments. In 2012, Liv Willars and I started Feature, with Heather Perkins eventually joining, and we released our album ‘Banishing Ritual’ in 2017. Along the way there were also shorter-lived bands Gold Foil and Mind Jail, formed with friends in the wider punk scene.

I wrote the lyrics and sang the song ‘Erase’ on Fucked Up’s album Raise Your Voice Joyce: Contemporary Shouts From Contemporary Voices (2018). I do backing vocals on various songs on Human Hair’s album ‘My Life As a Beast and Lowly Form’ (2014) and as part of a backing chorus on Buttonhead’s album ‘3D Opera Whale’ (2012).

Featured Music

Raise Your Voice Joyce / Raise Your Voice Joyce: Contemporary Shouts From Contemporary Voices

Fucked Up
Merge Records/Static Shock Records, 2018

I did backing vocals on Fucked Up’s single ‘Raise Your Voice Joyce’. I also wrote the lyrics and sang on the track ‘Erase’ on their compilation album Raise Your Voice Joyce: Contemporary Shouts From Contemporary Voices.

Official Raise Your Voice Joyce Video

Raise Your Voice Joyce, featuring Abraham’s vocal interplay with Jen Calleja, could be a turbo-charged B-52s

Dave Simpson, The Guardian

Deaths LP

Sauna Youth
Upset The Rhythm, 2018

The final album in the trilogy. An album once finished is frozen in time, solid and no longer resistent or adaptive to outside forces. Does the difficulty to find an end come from the genre, from punk’s revisionist impulse, redoing the same thing over and over? Do we avoid an ending because playing in a band is a distraction from everyday life?

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Parole LP

Mind Jail
Drunken Sailor Records, 2018
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Banishing Ritual

Feature
Upset The Rhythm, 2017

Thanks to Feature’s deceiving indifference, Banishing Ritual sounds like that house show you discovered last minute on a weekday, which ends up being one of the best gigs you’ve ever been to. […] Feature’s ability to evoke the purest, most visceral form of punk is an innate quality that comes naturally to the band

The Quietus
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Calleja’s lyrics are sparse narratives

Press Release Excerpt

Distractions LP

Sauna Youth
Upset The Rhythm, 2015

Distractions is made up of 14 songs about desire, but more importantly, about that area just out of reach of desire, at the very centre of the human psyche. It looks at what it means to be distracted from being yourself. It thrives in the desire to be someone else, the very idea that you could be someone else. It’s also an album that feels instinctive and natural, flowing freely from a band that have come to terms with the sum of its parts. Ultimately though, Sauna Youth have made a colossal record which is impossible not to dance to.

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Jen Calleja’s articulate, poetically surreal discourse

Clash Magazine

Monotony LP

Monotony
Upset The Rhythm, 2014

The alter-ego of Sauna Youth.

Faux Discx is FINALLY putting out the first 6 songs written by the band Monotony on vinyl. Previously only available as a download and fleetingly as a limited cassette on Comfortable On A Tightrope, these six rough, instant and infectious songs were created without any intentions but soon took on a life of their own. The 12” repeats on both sides for a fully monotonous experience with hand screen-printed artwork by The Positive Press and limited to 300.

Pie and Vinyl
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False Jesii Part 2 (cover) / Oh Joel

Sauna Youth
Static Shock Records, 2013

A cover of Pissed Jeans’ infamous ‘False Jesii Part II’ as the A-side, and original track ‘Oh Joel’ as the B-side.

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This is Sauna Youth reborn as a c86 indie pop band. These two Jen-fronted tracks sound so good they could have been released back in the day on the Subway Organization or 53rd and 3rd. The music is raw and simple like a slowed down Ramones but the vocals are sugar sweet with lots of backing harmonies. If you love the Fizzbombs, The Flatmates or The Rosehips you will instantly fall in love with these two perfect under three minute indie pop gems.

Sean Forbes, Rough Trade

Dreamlands LP

Sauna Youth
Faux Discx / Gringo Records, 2012

An evolving band of young future humans making truly irregular punk not quite comparable to anything else; Sauna Youth’s debut album is served as a joint release between Gringo Records and Faux Discx. The band, attracted to the possibilities apparent within a DIY philosophy have been self-recording and self-releasing their own music since 2010, creating a number of seven inches, splits and cassettes. Dreamlands will be the band’s first long-player, marking the mutation of their sound and a new line-up.

Press Release, Faux Discx
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