2025 – UnsignedHub Podcast - When I caught up with Liam Croker and Anthony Egerton from the band Winachi it quickly became clear that they weren’t interested in sitting comfortably in any one scene. They’ve done the shadows and now they want the spotlight -but on their own terms. A few years ago Winachi were operating in a very different space: all murky textures and confrontational energy.

Think the brooding pulse of Massive Attack or the skeletal menace of Tricky. It wasn’t just music—it was atmosphere. Heavy and intense - sometimes too intense.

“Borderline intimidating” is how they framed it.

The problem? You can’t always dance to intimidation.

So they pivoted—not by softening, but by shifting the centre of gravity. Groove became the anchor but the edges stayed sharp. Try pinning Winachi down genre-wise and you’ll get a polite resistance. Yes, there’s funk in there—but not in the James Brown sense.

This is something looser, more hybrid: hip-hop attitude, electro textures, rock energy, all stitched together by rhythm. Their own description lands somewhere between poetic and precise: “swaggering northern tenacity spliced with Californian G-Funk”.

From Warrington to L.A.

Like many great bands, Winachi started small - jamming in sheds, knocking ideas together in Warrington pubs. Sessions took them to Los Angeles, recording at the Star Creation Centre with producer John X.

Tracks like The Arrival from the Sympathy For The Future album lean into that environment -wide, cinematic, slightly surreal. There’s talk of feedback loops and “elephant” sounds, building something closer to a sonic landscape than a standard track, just slip on your headphones and you’re transposed to a jungle somewhere and it’s a long way from the early days in the shed!

The Right People at the Right Time

Winachi’s orbit has steadily expanded, pulling in collaborators who add weight without diluting identity. Inder Goldfinger -known for his work with Ian Brown -helped sharpen the band musically, turning raw energy into something more controlled, more deliberate.

Then there’s Rowetta, formally of the Happy Mondays, whose appearance on Sympathy For The Future adds pure scale. It’s a statement feature - big voice, big presence, no compromise. Somehow, Keith Allen enters the mix too - via a spontaneous session that snowballed into live shows and a video cameo. Classic Winachi: unplanned but fully embraced.

What Now?

With Sympathy For The Future out in the world, Winachi feel like a band in motion rather than one that’s arrived. The sound is broader, the vision clearer, the ambition global.

Fast forward to 2026 and the band have just held their live premiere for the new single

‘ State of Mind’ at the Brickhaus Club in their hometown of Warrington, this will be released across all digital platforms from May 1st 2026.