Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan. Try saying that without a deep breath. However, you must agree, it is certainly a ‘memorable’ band name as described by Gordon Chapman-Fox, the artist behind the act.
Recently, Gordon and I had an extremely entertaining interview, which was broadcast on City Sound. As well as the stage name, we also chatted about grindcore, his new LP Industrial Growth, and WRNTDP’s upcoming Hot Box show. You can listen to the interview by double-clicking the image below.
Did I say a Hot Box show? Yes. I did. Even Butterflies Make A Sound is delighted to be promoting WRNTDP on 9 May 2026. It’s likely to sell out so better to secure your tickets soon, by clicking here. Why not check out my other promotion, seen in the flyer below, which is happening next week, here?
But, that’s not all. Below is another incisive LP from my esteemed guest writer, Andy Mckay.
Industrial Growth LP review
Andy Mckay
The reviewer is a lifelong prisoner of music and is one of Chelmsford’s old guard, having been in The Prodigal Sons, Apple Creation and The White Gospel. Currently with post-punk gaze band, Snakes, he continues to obsess and enthuse over music, film and writing.
So he’s more of an auteur, is our Gordon, creating a highly suggestive atmospheric oeuvre that evokes a sense of times and places now gone while simultaneously building them. Not so much science-fiction, more industrial convolution, a stylised personal aesthetic that fascinates, impresses, and scares in a series of rust-polished tone poems.
We are talking about Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan. Specifically, Industrial Growth, his seventh album under that name.
It is widescreen atmospheric electronica that conjures up a monochrome world inhabited by fields of pylons behind the council estate, of broken-windowed factory units that attract the stones of snotty parka clad schoolboys, venting via vandalism.
To my ears, the music evokes memories of scary 1970s public information adverts, so beautifully spoofed and amplified by the poster’s of Scarfolk.
It’s the music of a world left behind now its usefulness has gone, a world beloved by Urban Explorers thrillingly chilled by sinister finds in the abandoned asylum, horrified and yet comforted by a simpler time. When mankind manufactured with machine, hand and tool.
“There’s always been a darkness to my work, but this felt like the time to unleash it all,” says Gordon. “The ‘growth’ of the title isn’t about economics, this is something far more organic, eating away at our society.”
Music that creates images behind your eyes
It’s music you can see, you create images behind your eyes as you listen. It shares a similar space to that inhabited by Broadcast. That is, soundtracks for the psyche, kitchen sink dramas that expand ever wider, ever harder… the skies seen through the lens of Jodrell Bank.
It is Brutalist beauty. It’s incidental music that pushes itself centre stage, its immersive and massive, missives for the masses.
It’s 1980s horror film themes and clever sonic construction that makes you feel entirely aware of the temporary nature of things and the permanence of great art.
Final thoughts
While I’m very much a WRNTDP newby, this is an accomplished, exciting album of many layers, further proof of how electronic music can be exceptionally human. I will certainly be checking out the back catalogue.
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Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan
