Superorganism had a hit single before they’d even met. Now the hip eight-piece share a home, finds Patrick Smith

Twelve months ago, nobody had heard of Superorganism. Then their first single, Something for Your MIND – an irresistible, squishy slice of electro-pop peppered with sweet harmonies – appeared online and spread like wildfire. After hipster deities Frank Ocean and Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig both played the track on their radio shows, the band made it on to BBC’s Sound of 2018 list. For months, though, their identity remained a mystery. Rumours circulated that they might even be some bonkers new Gorillaz-style project from Damon Albarn.

Details gradually emerged of an oddball collective who had collaborated on the song together over the internet while living in different countries. Indeed, although the majority of the group have been sharing the same east London terraced house since 2015, it wasn’t until September, after they’d put the finishing touches to their self-titled debut album, that all eight members of Superorganism were finally in a room together.

“It’s all been very weird,” says 18-year-old Orono Noguchi, the band’s sub-5ft frontwoman. In 2015, back home in Tokyo from her New England boarding school for the holidays, the disaffected Japanese teenager befriended on Facebook two of her future Superorganism bandmates, Christopher Young and Mark Turner, and showed them around the city when they were touring with their former group, The Eversons.