Gigi: Hey, thanks for having us! I’m on vocals and manage the sampler during shows. As for ice cream, it's vanilla for me. But without the cone!

Coco: And I’m the guitar guy who nerds out with his pedalboard. I actually quite like ice cream with no added flavouring. There’s this frozen yoghurt flavour in the US that I love. It’s plain and sour, kinda like Greek yoghurt, and is called "Euro Tart”, which sounds very funny to the British ear and describes me quite well, I think! (laughs)

Coco: We first met at a music festival in Paris through our friend Gogo, from Teenage Menopause Records, and quickly realised that we had tons of mutual friends. Since we were both based in London, we started hanging out at gigs and parties, which eventually led to the birth of Zeropolis.

Gigi: Naming the band took a minute! We were tossing ideas around at the pub after rehearsal when “Zeropolis” came up. It’s actually a book title by French philosopher Bruce Begout that I had read a few years before. The book’s a reflection on Las Vegas, which is described as a "non-city”; a modern, artificial town and giant supermarket in the middle of the Mojave desert, both dreamy and nightmarish all at once. He mentions it being "distinguished by nothingness”, which kind of resonated with us!

Gigi: I think electronic music and DIY punk are very much intertwined, and have always been part of our musical DNA. Punk kind of shaped electronic music through bands like New Order, Suicide, Kraftwerk or Throbbing Gristle, and making music by yourself with a bunch of machines or a computer is pure DIY! Some of the craziest live acts I saw recently were electronic artists. I remember a concert of Holiday Inn in a South London record store where the frontman got butt-naked and sung against the shop window, scaring everyone outside. Can’t be more punk than that!

Coco: Yeah, that was quite something! A friend was living as a live-in guardian in this East London warehouse, which is pretty common here. Owners of vacant properties will let people stay in their building for much cheaper than market rent in exchange for security. They’ll sell it as something that provides social value when it's textbook precarious housing! These guardians aren’t bound by tenancies, don’t enjoy exclusive possession of the building, don’t have heating and live under the constant threat of eviction.

Anyway, she let us use the space, so we spent weeks building this massive garden shed in the middle. We soundproofed it with plasterboard and acoustic foam but in hindsight it was a bit of a hack job, I think everyone could hear us play miles around. (laughs) It was pretty safe if not for rare electric shocks, but obviously what was bound to happen happened and the building was demolished on short notice to make room for new flats. The owners tried to bill us for the shed, even though the whole place was being razed! Madness.

Gigi: Social commentary is core to punk rock; any band claiming to be “apolitical” raises an eyebrow for me! But we’re also conscious that songs are just songs and might not spark any change. The main thing is to avoid empty virtue signalling, and focus instead on subjects we've personally encountered; like navigating city life, our work environment or social scenes. We want to give a snapshot of the world from our perspective!

Gigi: 'Social Jet Lag' is about the yearning that some people feel towards social mobility, to the extent that it becomes all-consuming. The lyrics highlight the irony of people striving to fit into groups that might ultimately reject or belittle them. I’ve seen it happen around me and always felt these persons are forsaking their true identity, and will always feel dissatisfied as a result.

Coco: It’s set for release some time in the new year. I think the songs are a little more accomplished than our first EP, when we were trying to find our sound. We’ve also been looking at a wider musical spectrum, from EBM to Oi!, and have experimented more in the studio, with the addition of piano, acoustic guitars or real percussion.

Coco: Hopefully a music video very soon! We might also drop a bonus track that didn’t make the album cut on our label’s (AnalogueTrash) next sampler, so keep an eye out! And gig-wise, we’re gearing up to hopefully tour after the album release. Promoters: book us!

Gigi: Thanks for having us, and fuck ice cream cones!