Meet Ultimate Thunder: the most punk rock band in the world

Dear readers — which is the best Leeds band around today? Many might opt for the post-punk outfit Yard Act, but Yard Act themselves have other ideas. They'll tell you it's Ultimate Thunder.

The punk band, which has been around since 2012, is a bit unusual: most of its members have some form of learning disability. This year, their story has made it to the big screen, with a documentary about them scooping up big awards and being shown around the world. For today's article we sat down with the band to hear about their last few crazy years.

Before that, we've got news of docks, skyscrapers, and the latest bill to land on The Exchange's desk...

The round up

🛥️ A buyer has been found for Leeds Dock, The Exchange understands. The development has been somewhat  in limbo since the end of last year when the company that owned the lease went into administration. The administrators, Interpath, came in and has been fielding for buyers since May with nothing substantial at the time of writing our feature on Leeds Dock last month.

Now we’ve been told the MCR Property Group, the multi-billion-pound Manchester company, is looking to purchase Leeds Dock. MCR said in a statement that it is “an active purchaser in the market” but refuses to comment on “potential acquisitions or market speculation”. Similarly, Interpath confirmed it is in discussions with several interested parties but could not provide an official comment. 

💰 Multimillionaire Terry George owns major Leeds venues — FIBRE and The Viaduct Showroom, as well as being behind Leeds Pride. Recently he and others sunk over a million into buying Thwaites Mill, and they’ll need to spend much more than that sorting it out. Perhaps that’s why he’s chasing loss-making newspaper, The Exchange, for £600?

Terry’s beef appears to be the use of an image from his Instagram in our story about the mill project. We believed he had used the video we screen-grabbed to promote the project, and so this would generally be considered fair game when writing a piece about it. (We’re also fairly sure that, had the story only talked about the revamp and not drawn attention to the tensions with nearby boaters, then we wouldn’t be hearing from him). Nonetheless, when he got in touch, we obliged and took it down.

That doesn’t seem to be enough for Terry, who last week sent us a bill for £600, telling us this reflected a “proportionate commercial valuation” of the image. If we don't cough up, he's threatening legal action. Which seems a pretty extreme step when someone has simply shared a screenshot of your instagram.

🏗️ Further conTorsions: The Exchange was contacted by the Saxton Gardens Residents Association on Monday about an issue regarding parking bays, on Flax Place. A section of this was coned off and used by construction workers under a temporary traffic regulation order as part of the neighbouring 300-unit built-to-rent Flax Place development. This was fine while Torsion Construction was still around but as we reported in our investigation into Sky Gardens, that arm of the group went into administration over the summer.

The Residents’ Association says the issue has continued under new contractors: Structon CM Ltd, despite Leeds City Council telling them the regulation order is non-transferable. A quick look at Companies House provides an intriguing, but not entirely surprising, revelation: Structon’s sole director is Daniel Spencer — the CEO of Torsion. In other words, it’s a phoenix: where one company is shut down and another pops up in its place, with the same people but minus all the liabilities. (Structon has a live application for a new regulation order, according to the Resident’s Association.)

Speaking of Sky Gardens, Brad has noticed on his commute into the office over the past few weeks that work is seemingly back underway. We’d heard at the time of our investigation that Aztec Construction had taken over from Torsion and last month, one of our clan spotted the company’s logo on the boardings outside the development.

Meet Ultimate Thunder: the most punk rock band in the world

By Daniel Dylan Wray

When Ultimate Thunder step on stage, literally nobody – the audience or the band – knows what to expect. Sometimes the singer might not sing at all. Or perhaps the drummer may go off on a wild tangent, as synths gurgle and bleep wildly. No two shows are ever close to being the same. 

The band are a 100% improvisational punk outfit and most members have learning disabilities: Down’s syndrome and autism. “We just stare at each other until someone does something,” laughs guitarist James Heselwood. “And then if it’s the wrong thing, we all just scowl at each other.”

Yard Act have called them the best band in Leeds. The Big Issue declared them “the most punk-rock band in Britain” and Nathan Clark from the Brudenell Social Club describes them as: “the most pure form of what artistic output can be.” Now they are the stars, and co-directors, of an award-winning film: Ultimate Thunder: A Film About the Most Punk Rock Band in the World! 

The film has its hometown premiere at the 40th edition of Leeds International Film Festival this week, but it’s already been a smash on the festival circuit. At its world premiere at Sheffield Doc/Fest back in June it took home the coveted Audience Award, and the film has been selected to screen everywhere from Finland to Switzerland. So, what do the band make of their big screen debut? “It was okay and funny,” says keyboardist Alex Sykes, nonchalantly, as laughter ripples across the room.

Sykes is with vocalist Matthew Watson, drummer Scott Anderson, bassist Kenneth Stainburn, Heselwood, and producer James Mabbett, along with the film’s director Ben G. Brown. Ahead of our interview, Brown tells me this set-up “might be chaos, but great fun” and he is correct on both counts. 

The band describe themselves as “post experimental, post punk, post disco, post band” and have been active since 2012 after Heselwood got a call from Leeds charity People in Action. They told him they had "three guys who want to start a heavy metal band" and he jumped at the chance to get involved. Numerous gigs followed and by 2022 they released their self-titled debut album, with the help of Arts Council funding. (Heselwood and Mabbett even set up a record label to release the music, Easy Listening Records, as a direct way to try and restore some balance and address lack of accessibility in the music industry for bands with disabilities. Other releases include records by the Leeds songwriter Mate Eric P.M, who has autism.)

Brown is a Leeds-based filmmaker who has made documentaries, and stumbled across Ultimate Thunder when working with Watson on another project. “I went down to film with them for a day and just fell in love with the music, the mission and the people,” he recalls. “Their sound was so unique, and their approach to making music was unlike anything I'd ever seen.” 

Brown eventually spent over three years following the band. He also gave them their own cameras to shoot footage, crediting them as co-directors. “With something like this, we could never predict what was going to happen,” says Brown. But after about six months of filming, the lack of a clear narrative hook was becoming an issue. “I kept getting emails from Ben saying, ‘we really need these guys to do a festival or something’,” recalls Mabbett. “Like, ‘we need something to happen in this film’. And then it all kicked off.”