Ben and Mungo shared their love of music over the years, playing and learning together, but it wasn’t until 2022 that they formed Scarsdale Fats to perform, for the first time, at Mungo’s father’s memorial.

“I think back then it was more about Mung’s dad’s memorial, so it was kind of like, how many of the homies can we fit in one room?” Ben recalled.

Mungo’s relationship with his father echoes throughout the band, from their first performance to the band’s name. Scarsdale Fats, as it turns out, was a mythical character created by Mungo’s dad as an alter ego.

“He had seasonal bipolar, and in the summer, he would just become this character.”

“It sounds kind of heavy, but actually it was something really beautiful by the end, and it was funny, and it was weird and wonderful. And just before he passed away, he kind of was like, you know, continue the legacy,” Mungo shared.

Music was a big part of Mungo’s relationship with his father. Over the years, the guys played around with different names, but always went back to Scarsdale Fats; it always had the most meaning.

After that, they kept going, just playing the music they love, figuring it out. Of course, it took some time for the band to take form. With Jasper (bass) and Luke coming in as the drummer, elevating the band’s sound, Scarsdale Fats are in their best shape.

As Mungo told me, “We were six pieces at one point. I don’t know who we thought we were, because we could barely write a song, and we had six people playing it. And then we got a bit picky. A bit judgmental.”

The band’s sound also underwent a big transformation in the last four years.

“I think it started off very indie-folk, and I think that was a reflection of maybe our capabilities as songwriters. I think it’s because we didn’t have the technical ability. All we had was three chords and whatever the fuck, lyrics we could come up with or just the simplest rhymes that you could possibly do.” Ben shared.

“It was very safe music, you know? I think we were still afraid of owning who we were,” Mungo added.

The Fats have come quite far in the last four years. With the band’s EP release in full swing and a calendar filled with upcoming gigs, they are well on their way to having their lyrics screamed out at them by inherited fans on the streets of London. I wondered if Ben and Mungo always had an idea for the band’s trajectory. Their answer was very on-brand.

“It sort of started happening before we even really decided to make it happen, you know?” Mungo began.

Ben continued, “I mean, this whole band has been fuelled by just, like, luck.”

“Yeah, delusion”, Mungo playfully added.

“The amount of breaks we’ve gotten from basically no work. It’s ridiculous.”

“The first show, we just got given. And then, a year later, at the show by the same person we opened for, we ended up meeting the guys from Glastonbury, who got us on stage and helped fund our EP.”

“It’s just all of these serendipitous moments of complete luck, and you know, I guess just undeserved,” Ben shared.

Mungo added, “But then that runs out, you know, and then you’ve got to work fucking hard.” They smiled and nodded in agreement.

Beyond their admirable self-awareness, Ben and Mungo still understand that you only get a certain number of breaks in the industry. Four years in, they have a strong set and a sound that developed not through constant homages or inspirations, but from the guys’ own love for different genres.

As Mungo put it, “Collectively as a band, we’re turned on by so many different things. It’s not like all our music comes from the genre we’re in. Ben’s a massive lover of Eastern music. Jasper comes from a hip-hop, reggae, and DMB background. Luke is a sort of modern 70s hippie, so he comes from the psychedelic realm. I would say I am somewhere in the middle, maybe I like a bit of everything. I feel like everyone’s kind of channelling, maybe subconsciously, the stuff they love.”

The blending of genres comes off very authentic for Scarsdale Fats, mostly because, well, it just is. In looking up to their inspirations, they are not trying to emulate them. Instead of building their sound on a single idea or style, they share music, influencing each other’s taste through collaborative exchanges.

That collaboration serves as the basis for putting their music together. Jam sessions typically consist of honest conversations between friends. As Ben began to expand on the band’s creative process, he noted that some of the most rewarding work he and Mungo had done together had come when they lived in the same flat. They would hear each other play through the walls, built upon each other’s melodies, and before they knew it, a track was born.

“Mungo will come with a song, or I’ll come with a song, or Jasper, or Luke will come with a riff. It’s sort of, however it works, but I think our best stuff has normally come from that moment where Mungo hears something I’m playing, and he’ll come in and record it, and then we’ll go next door, and we’ll just build it from there,” Ben shared.

“Yeah, it’s true. I think there’s always a spark. And I think it’s super exciting when you bring it into a room and see it become something greater. You’re kind of all part of a collective philosophy in a way that helps just to serve these songs,” Mungo added.

With all music, but especially with rock music, where live instruments and vocals can convey feelings that recorded sound can’t quite carry, being up on the stage looking down to a crowd is everything. As much as the band builds their music in the studio, they understand the power of playing it live. Ben and Mungo admit to making some changes to their songs based on live performances.

Ben began, “I think you really need to play your music live to see at what points people are most engaged, or at what points you think we really sync.”

“Also, at which points of the songs do you become detached when you’re playing them? I have that quite a lot. It’s a big thing that these guys always say, you need to write the fucking lyrics. I sometimes sing the songs live on stage, making them up as I go,” Mungo continued.

I noted to Mungo that changing the lyrics makes every live show special. It makes their music constant rather than finite. It’s not bound by the time it is written, recorded or performed; it never truly ends. To that, he made an interesting point. It made me think, does making a song infinite actually do a disservice to the music? Should the song be bound to allow the band’s sound to grow?

“I do fear, as a songwriter, getting to a point where the song is done. I like things that evolve, and there’s something that really freaks me out about something being done because I guess it’s also a fear of maybe becoming detached from that in a few months’ time and not being able to sing the song with any kind of integrity or passion. But I’m reckoning with that more, that you can isolate things to a certain period, and it’s not that deep, you know,” he told me.

Overall, Scarsdale Fats try to create both substance and feeling. Some songs are based on a simple impression, others examine complex questions. All leave a mark.

“Coming here(Tate) quite a lot, I kind of learned, through looking at the Bacons or the Turners, that you don’t necessarily have to paint a subject matter. You can paint with a sensation. Ben’s style of playing guitar, which he grew into, is very sensational to me. So that really inspired me lyrically and melodically to start being a bit more impressionistic with the music.”

“I just believed that what Ben, Luke, Jasper, and I do as best friends, you know, because we are very honest with each other, I just always felt like whatever would come out of it was at least honest,” Mungo shared.

Taking a pause to realise I had lost count of how many times Ben and Mungo had complimented each other, I invited the guys to step back and reflect on the changing tides within the industry.

Their rising success as a band has come at a time when rock music is finding its way back into the spotlight.

“There’s been such a wealth of bands that have inspired us over the past three or four years. Like Fontaines and Heartworms, these guys are bringing left-field alt-rock back to the mainstream,” Ben noted.

After almost a decade of being led by music that often prioritised charts over substance, the listeners are seeking something more human. Of course, rock music never went away; it has always been and will always remain an important part of our cultural ecosystem. But the newfound appreciation audiences have for loud, alive, unpolished music cannot be overstated. As I joked to Ben and Mungo, if life right now feels like we all want to scream, why not scream to music?

“It feels like music’s becoming more human again. I was pretty disengaged from modern music for a few years, and now I see a lot of these bands that share many of our influences reviving or popping into the zeitgeist,” Mungo began.

“I feel like music is becoming nostalgic again. I don’t know, maybe people are finding more peace in the past. It seems to get louder and muddier, too. I think you’re right, people want to scream at the moment at something,” Ben continued.

He then took a second to, let’s say, reflect on the past, and added, “And I think people coming towards, not to slate music that was like big five, ten years ago, but Drake is hardly a critique or a reflection of that time. It felt like pop music was not really reflective of the world.” I mean, fair.

When I asked the guys how they felt about the music they had grown up listening to, the same music that had powered their passion for life on the stage, getting a newfound recognition, Mungo replied:

“I’m kind of conflicted about this because we were talking about it with the guy who produced us the other day, and he said this stuff is far more calculated than consumers believe. The market creates a deficit to generate demand, then gives it to them, and then you have a moment in culture. But I think people still relate to it regardless.”

He then added, “It’s hard to find meaning in this weird modern era, and it makes sense that people are finding refuge in the arts, or truth in the arts, because I feel like truth is very hard to come by these days. It’s very hard to know who to believe or what to believe. And I’ve always found truth by hearing it through music, or in a painting, or in a poem. Far more so than in a political campaign or through the press or the news.”

That’s true. In a world where we have given up seeking facts and settled for prepackaged half-truths, finding a space safe from deception can be hard. That’s why we begin to see more value in honest expression—live instruments, lyrics that tell the whole story, and the piercing sound of music telling us there’s still someone who gets us.

The band is definitely inspired by seeing their favourite music rise to prominence. Of course, they wouldn’t be Scarsdale Fats if they didn’t tell me that; regardless of the genre’s popularity, that’d still be doing the exact same thing.

“It’s funny you say that, too, because it’s also dumb luck that this music has become popular again. We would probably still be doing the sound, this band, even if nothing else was going on, because it’s what we love,” Mungo told me.

In the last year, the band has come into their own. They tightened up their sound and dedicated every waking moment to working on their new EP. As Mungo eloquently pointed out, “Well, I got a job, and Ben stopped smoking weed, so that makes sense. We came out of our self-induced coma.”

He then explained, “I feel like we had to have a massive cultural shift in the band. My brother joined as our manager in January, and it was like a 10-foot-tall mirror being held up to us, and he was basically like, “I will work for you for free because I believe in this music, but I do not believe in your capabilities to execute what you plan to do.” He was militant.”

With days in the studio and nights on stage, the members of Scarsdale Fats still have to hustle to raise the band to new heights. All of the guys have full-time jobs and have had to make a fair share of sacrifices to get to where they are now. Knowing what we know about the industry, they will probably have to make more, but in Mungo’s own words, their success feels “more possible than ever.”

He added with a smile, “If you think about it too much, you go crazy, so that’s kind of a challenge in itself, but it’s hard to complain. I get to do it with my best friends.”

So what does the future hold for Scarsdale Fats? I think the best way to conclude their story is to let them answer for themselves. Try as I might, I won’t be able to communicate the mentality of the band any better than by pasting the transcript of the last few minutes of our conversation.

Me: And what are your plans for the future, for the band?

Mungo: Get rich…

Ben: We’re gonna quit. I’m gonna accept an internship with Goldman Sachs.

Mungo: I will not get a job at Goldman Sachs.

Ben: Mungo will be my secretary at Goldman Sachs.

Ben: The plans for the future are to hit the new year running with a bunch of shows. We’re going to be living in the George Tavern for about a week. We got three shows in a week at the George Tavern, which we love.

Mungo: We want them to be sick of us, by the end, basically.

Ben: So they remember who the fuck we are.

And then it’s going to be thinking about starting to release this shit, you know, thinking about how we can release this EP. Hopefully, score a support slot on a tour. Sell some more merch.

Mungo: Europe.

Ben: Mungo wants to go on a holiday to the South of France.

Mungo: I want to go to bed. That would be nice, a good night’s sleep.

Ben: This is going to be the biggest year of the Fats. Tours, music release. Physical music, T-shirts, hats, bags, socks, thongs.

I think we’re just going to keep doing what we’re doing and just keep trying to build this thing.

Mungo: And constant evolution. I would love for each project to have a different face, but the same heart, isn’t that right?

Ben: Sure. Trying to find a new lead singer, if anyone reading this is interested.