Since forming in 2012, London five-piece TOY have built upon their surging motorik sound with fluid momentum. The group’s bold evolution stems from their vast and diverse range of influences: from Ennio Morricone’s iconic Western scores to Voodoo rhythms through acid house bliss, the band collage their tastes to form a unique aesthetic.

Since the start of 2015 TOY have been splitting their time between frontman Tom Dougall and bassist Maxim Barron’s place in New Cross and Dominic O’Dair’s flat in Walthamstow penning and recording their third studio record, titled Clear Shot. Set for release at the end of this month, this latest long play sees the band once again step into new territory. Here, the band talk us through some of the literary and cinematic influences behind this latest release. From Genesis Breyer P-Orridge’s journey through voodoo culture to Salvador Dali’s trippy Hollywood dream sequence, it’s an eclectic mix that offers a taster of the band’s fresh musical direction.  

Confessions Of An English Opium Eater by Thomas De Quincey
Charlie Salvidge: “An exquisite tome, not least for the vivid depictions and nightmarish descriptions of poppy-seed induced mental turmoil, but a fascinating autobiographical account of the life of a wandering vagrant in the early victorian era (albeit one from a wealthy background who could count such luminaries as Wordsworth amongst his close allies). The evocative passages relating to his filthy lodgings shared with a street urchin in Greek street, London, then a squalid, down-at-heel area of Soho, have always stayed with me, conjuring a feeling of kinship with the author whenever I walk in his footsteps today.”

‘Bight of the Twin’ (2016) dir. Hazel Hill McCarthy III
Maxim “Panda” Barron: “A documentary me and Max saw recently about the practice and origins of Vodoun or Voodoo in West Africa. The film tells the story of Genesis P-Orridge travelling to Ouidah in Benin where s/he hopes to discover more about the ‘twin culture’ and the rituals and worship they practice there. Benin has an unusually high amount of twins born and they are worshipped as demi-gods with their own festival. There’s some really great footage of the rituals and ceremonies they perform. It made me want to go there and do it.”

The White Goddess by Robert Graves
Max Oscarnold: “I first heard of Graves through his connection with Kevin Ayers and Wyatt as they were neighbours in Majorca and his account of the time he spent in the WWI trenches, Goodbye To All That. I then heard that The White Goddess influenced Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. In the book he traces the origins of poetic myth and inspiration and shows you how things we take for granted like the alphabet, the calendar, religion amongst others have been intertwined and modified through history by man and his eagerness to control and gain power. Also how, before gods became male, people in early matriarchal societies lived in cults dedicated to female entities like the moon. It taught me the conflict of interests that are still in force today and that if we ignore the past we are bound to repeat the same mistakes with no chance of going back, which seems to be the case unfortunately.”

‘Spellbound’ (1945) dir. Alfred Hitchcock
Tom Dougall: “Over the last year or two I’ve been watching a lot of Hitchcock films. Vertigo is probably my favourite, but out of the slightly lesser well known films I’ve chosen Spellbound. It tells the story of the new head of a mental asylum in Vermont who turns out to not be what he seems, exploring psychoanalysis and childhood trauma along the way. Out of all Hitchcock’s films this has the most dreamlike atmosphere. Soon, you realise Gregory Peck has a phobia of seeing parallel lines against a white background, which is when the theremin kicks in (the first time the ethereal instrument was used in a film). The orchestral score by Miklos Rozsa is incredible. We actually have a song from a new EP named after Spellbound. We were influenced by not just the music but the atmosphere and pacing of the films, the slightly claustrophobic paranoid feelings they instil.”

Against Nature, (À Rebours) by J.K. Huysmans
Dominic O’Dair: “Writing in the fin-de-siècle, Huysmans devised the book as a repost to the Naturalist movement, which he felt had become stagnant and stuck in its ways, in its stead offering new ideas that came to symbolise and encapsulate the values of Aestheticism and Decadentism. The novel follows a young nobleman who escapes Paris to flee his decadent lifestyle and impending ennui, to take up solo residence in a countryside villa where he is free to pursue a life of deranged and subversive experiments on his own sensuality. He concocts an infinite variety of blends of liqueurs in his own mouth-organ, plants a poisonous flower garden and gilds a tortoise, encrusting its shell with precious jewels and dispassionately eyeing it as it paddles heavily around the room, all whilst managing to devour a good deal of literature while he’s at it. One chapter describes him reclining in a chair and experimenting with a full gamut of exotic perfumes, spritzing new rich combinations of fragrances into the air until he succumbs to an artificially induced olfactory reverie. Interestingly, this is the novel that is regularly referred to but never mentioned by name in The Picture Of Dorian Grey as the corrupting force on the eponymous character.”

Toy ‘Clear Shot’ is out 28th October on Heavenly Recordings.