London has always been a city of crossings: people arrive with different histories, accents, references and ideas, and the music tends to absorb all of it. It was here, in that constant state of movement, that Hate Moss took shape. Tina, from Italy, and Ian, from Brazil, began working together in 2017, initially through Stock-a Records, an independent label they founded as a space for their own work and for the artists around them. Over time, the label developed into Stock-a Production, an artistic collective whose activity would extend beyond releases into production, live performance, collaboration and the creation of an international network.

    In 2018, their collaboration became a musical project in its own right. Hate Moss emerged with “Honey”, their first single, and almost immediately the relationship between recorded music and live performance became central to the project. The duo began touring across Brazil, Italy and the UK, building a body of work through movement and experience before releasing their debut album, LIVE TWOTHOUSANDHATEIN, in May 2019. Spain, Portugal and Turkey followed, extending the project’s reach across a European circuit increasingly receptive to its hybrid approach.

    Later that year came an invitation from the Biennale to perform during the opening of Heat at the Church of Misericordia in Venice. It was a significant setting for a project whose music has always occupied an open space between disciplines, drawing on the physicality of performance as much as on the possibilities of the recording studio.

    Then the world stopped.

    During the first lockdown in London, Tina and Ian continued to work together and produced Fog. Created during a period defined by isolation, uncertainty and a sudden absence of the touring life that had become so important to them, the release marked another stage in the duo’s development. With the usual movement temporarily suspended, the studio became the place where that movement could continue in another form.

    By May 2022, Hate Moss were ready to enter their next phase. Their second album, NaN, was released by Stock-a Production in collaboration with Brazilian label Before Sunrise Records, opening the door to an extraordinary period of touring. Across 2023, the duo played more than 150 concerts throughout Europe, the UK and Turkey, carrying NaN into clubs, venues and festivals and gradually expanding the audience around their live performances.

    The following year took them across the Atlantic. In 2024, Hate Moss toured South America, travelling through Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile and appearing at a number of festivals. At the same time, NaN itself began to evolve beyond the form in which it had originally been released. Tina and Ian invited friends and musicians from their wider scene to remix or reinterpret selected tracks, turning the album into an open-ended collaborative project. The resulting versions were released digitally, one track at a time, throughout 2024.

    The idea of music as something that can keep changing runs through the history of Hate Moss. A song can exist as a studio recording, become something more physical on stage, be reshaped by another musician and return in a completely different form. Their work has increasingly developed around that sense of permeability, with electronics, voice, rhythm, noise and performance continually shifting their relationship to one another.

    In June 2025, Mercimek Days brought that live dimension into focus. Released through Trovarobato and recorded live at Karga in Istanbul, the EP features the previously unreleased “Aiknow” alongside live versions of “Remake the Time (Part 1 and Part 2)” and “Birdaha”. Rather than functioning simply as another chapter of recorded material, the release documents the physical energy that had become such a defining part of the duo’s identity after years spent on the road.

    Istanbul occupies an important place in that journey. So does the broader geography of Hate Moss, whose music has increasingly been shaped by the places in which it has been performed and the communities encountered along the way. Italy and Brazil remain fundamental points of reference, but London is where those histories meet, and the project has continued to extend that meeting across Europe, the Mediterranean and South America.

    From late August to late September 2025, Hate Moss returned to South America for another tour. In January 2026, they released their third LP, A Hot Mess, through Trovarobato, bringing together another stage of a musical language that has spent almost a decade developing through movement, experimentation and live performance.

    The title A Hot Mess feels particularly fitting for a project whose music thrives on collisions. The duo’s sound carries traces of Italian and Brazilian singer-songwriters from the 1960s and 70s, particularly in the way personal experience and social observation can exist within the same song. Around that foundation sit the psychedelic impulses of rave and trip-hop, abrasive industrial textures and the restless energy of electronic music. There is also a connection to the contemporary Mediterranean alternative scene, where traditional musical references have increasingly been pulled apart, reworked and placed into dialogue with electronic and experimental forms.

    These influences rarely arrive in isolation. They overlap, interfere with one another and create new shapes. A melodic gesture can carry the memory of a songwriter before being swallowed by a heavier electronic pulse; a rhythm can suggest the dancefloor while the surrounding textures move towards something darker and more industrial. The music retains a sense of song while allowing sound, atmosphere and physical rhythm to take an equally important role.

    That tension is particularly apparent in the live setting. Hate Moss have spent much of their existence travelling between clubs and festivals, and the stage has become a place where the distinctions between genres become increasingly fluid. The music can become heavier, stranger or more immediate in performance, with the duo using the energy of the room as part of the process.

    During the first part of 2026, A Hot Mess was taken across Europe and the UK, with performances in clubs and festivals extending into Eastern regions including Georgia, Armenia, Turkey and Greece. The growing attention around the new record led to further invitations beyond Europe, with Hate Moss scheduled to perform at festivals in South Korea and Japan during September and October. From there, the project will continue its journey with another tour across South America.

    The international scale of that itinerary reflects something fundamental about Hate Moss. Since the creation of Stock-a Records in 2017, Tina and Ian have built their project around exchange: between Italy and Brazil, between London and the places they visit, between the studio and the stage, and between their own music and the artists they invite into it. Their catalogue has grown alongside a network of musicians, producers, labels, venues and audiences that stretches across several continents.

    It is this constant movement that gives Hate Moss its particular character. Their music carries the history of Italian and Brazilian songwriting into the contemporary electronic landscape, allowing the intimacy of the singer-songwriter tradition to meet the collective energy of rave and club culture. Trip-hop, industrial music and experimental electronics add further layers, while the Mediterranean alternative underground provides another point of reference for their restless approach to tradition and reinvention.

    There is something appropriately London about the way all these elements coexist. The city provided the original meeting point, but the project has since become too geographically expansive to belong to any single place. Its identity has been shaped as much by Istanbul, São Paulo, Venice, Lisbon, Buenos Aires or Tbilisi as it has by London, with each journey adding another perspective to the music.

    Almost ten years after Tina and Ian first began working together, Hate Moss have turned that movement into an artistic principle. A Hot Mess arrives as the latest expression of it: a record shaped by years of touring, collaboration and experimentation, and by a musical imagination that continues to move between cultures, scenes and generations. Their work lives in that restless space between the familiar and the unexpected, where a song can become a performance, a performance can become a recording, and a recording can begin another journey.

On 7 October, you can catch Hate Moss live at the MiL Festival, on the Sotão stage.

Photo 1: Fernando Pauludo

Photo 2: Liliana Ricci

Photo 3: Music Note Book