Stig Noise MMX & Barberos split EP launch @ Wolstenholme Creative Space

Oh, Wolsteholme Creative Space. You beautifully grotty little wonder. It’s perhaps one of the few spaces in Liverpool which manages to be colder indoors than outdoors in Winter, and blisteringly, brutally hot in the questionable British Summertime.

A lasciviously open and blank canvas of a space, it holds the kinds of performances which leave you staggering out of the place at God knows what time in the fucking morning trying desperately to cram receipts of brain matter back into your skull which have been badgered and blown out by a treatise of bands hours previous.

Tonight is one of those sublime brain-matter-scatter-nights. A total treat. And despite a sardine-crammed line up of excellence (including Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp, Spirit Animals, Pariah Qarey...), we somehow only manage to properly catch two of the fervent applause anticipant bands on offer.

Fuck. Blame it on alcohol urgencies, rum brain deliriums and the fact that the place is packed out with every favourite person you owe a high five and a sequence of cackle wielding banter to.

Shit happens when you wander off for a quick piss only to discover a half hour queue and an upstairs room full of people too caught in the cross fires of conversation to make it back downstairs to the actual gig.

Still, Stig Noise MMX and Barberos are divine treats enough.

Stig, as ever, are their usual onslaught of brass, gut pounding drums, distortion, and pseudo-psycho-composures of riffs. Guttural grind ramblings of vocals and whimsical, diametric melodies wound up into tight, bold statements of shredding, bombastic scores are as ever, irresistible, and a mainstay of their prowess.

The crowd’s an odd mixture, mind. Seems we’re not the only ones with a rum swamp for a think tank, but at least the majority of us can handle our ale. For those that can’t, staggering, knee hitching dance moves, attempts to sweep whoever, wherever, off their feet where they stand and general flailing about at horizontal angles seems to be the only way some of the crowd feel able to interpret Stig Noise’s own personal riot.

There’s men in suits reeling off archaic chat up lines to many a poor broad mid set, who look as though they got a bit lost on their way to The Pleasure Rooms.

But fuck it, by the time Hearts Of Gold/ Gobs Of Shite plays out to tie a tidy, lovesome bow to the end of Stig’s gutter-waltz set you couldn’t give a shit that some gobshite in a John Lewis ‘original’ is butting into your side like a rhino trying to escape a fucking zoo.

A good hour and a half bridges the gap between these fine fellows and Barberos, in which the seemingly multiplying crowd crams into a back room to catch a glimpse of Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp. Theres people gawping through windows, stood on chairs, tables and people, leering through gaps wherever they can find them.

But booze, piss and smoke missions hinder what was obviously, at least in some part, a must see performance. I’m a dickhead for not paying enough attention. Let’s just leave it at that and move on...

Barberos then. Four fine young men with a fetish for full body silver spandex (who doesn’t share that fetish? Come on), cacophony and beating drums hard enough for BDSM enthusiasts to lip bitingly be urged to scream out their ‘safe’ word, take to the stage before a hungry, tanked up, piled in crowd.

Fuck. Me. It’s. Good. A dystopian noise scramble of brain digging which ventures between malevolent sound scores of the satisfyingly viscous and toe curling sublime, all framed by back screen visuals of discordance and facial squirm play.

They’re the noise of nights bled hedonistically into early mornings, of searing sunrise in wrung out pupils, of a brain squirming inside the skull perilously drying itself foul of chemicals, rapid and inane thought processes and spirit soaked alarm bells.

A barrage of manipulated doom siren synth, and dual drummers in place of vocal and word heavy vocalists, the narrative of the set is hell bent on staggering, insufferable rhythm, the lost laconic, the fevered, the unrelenting.

The crowd is understandably sick for it. A bleating united urge of beat grabbing mass who holler throughout, pounding palm to palm excitably, and refuse to surrender at the will of each songs end.

Fucking hell, the drums are ridiculous. Ferociously charged, they’re succinct to the beatings of unimaginable pace. Are feral and incessant - the heaviest, most beautifully aggressive poundings which go off on unreal tangents which seem to have a dialect and vocabulary of a language you only wish your lover’s tongue could learn.

So good it’s almost exhausting. But who wants to sleep after that? Fuck. That.

We cheekily procured a copy of the Stig Noise MMX vs Barberos split EP on vinyl, and strongly urge you all to get yer grubby mitts on a copy.

You’ll wanna experience em both live, but as a 4AM backing soundtrack of discord to discord (if that’s what you’re into, like...), this is the best you’re gonna get without attempting to smuggle them into your living room after a few too many rounds of escapist snacks.

True Story. Get onto it.

Buy said amazing EP here...

Stig Noise MMX: http://www.myspace.com/stignoise

Barberos: http://www.myspace.com/barberosmusic

The Temps @ Liverpool O2 Academy July 3

Photos by Matt Thomas: http:mattthomas.co.uk

Fuck knows when it happened, but somewhere between Korova opening and Korova burning down (farewell dear scumfest) people forgot how to have actual fucking FUN at gigs.

No-one thrashes around anymore, punches don't get thrown, spit is no longer exchanged between audience and band, limbs don't get broken half as much as they used to be, stages remain in tact, and I can't even remember the last time I left a gig with spatters of someone else's vomit sprayed on the front of my shoes / t-shirt/ dress/ jeans.

Audience interaction lately seems to amount to only so much as a delicate arse wiggle, foot shuffle, a determined stiffly enforced pout of the lips and a nod of the head. Fuckin'ell.

So it was with warm, elated, heart charged delight that thrashing, stage destruction, vomit, and - 'someone outta get the emergency services on call just in case , shit is gonna go down'- plain recklessness was witnessed at the O2 Academy courtesy of The Temps.

Rampant with the kind of energy, brute force and power which could probably peel the stubborn leathery hide off Iggy Pop's insurance salesman withering bones, The Temps are the fuck off boot that this city / country has been in desperate need of for quite some time now. Experiencing them live is like being kicked brutally awake, and realising you've slept through the past six years or so of weak attempts at live shows.

Guitars and bass are brutal and fluid, every note sounds charged, every riff so sharp you can practically feel em breaking the skin and dancing through every one of your nerves - drums are magnetic and forceful, a skin bash self-applause of what are without a doubt some scarringly catchy tunes (look out for The Lesson, Electrolytes and Who Are They (To Say) ).

The audience is ape-shit. It's the way audiences used to be before someone decided it was anti-etiquette to stop caring if you elbow someone in the face behind you whilst you lose your fucking cool, mind and body to a band. There are pits of lads at the front of the stage going f-u-c-k-i-n-g-m-e-n-t-a-l.

IS RIGHT. About time, like.

Frontman Joey is perilously engaging - if he were to jump off a fucking cliff, you would follow. If he were to stick his hand in the fire, you'd willingly join him in searing the flesh off your own paw. Darting around the stage, he climbs the barriers, climbs the walls, thrashes himself about the place, fucks the scene up, vomits everywhere at one point and spits beer out all over proceedings when he realises he's taken a swig of the fit-juice right before a crucial riff - and boys gotsta dance, even he does receive a minor electric shock from the act.

He keeps up a strong dialogue with the audience - his thick accent framing a number of self-deprecating and t-shirt worthy statements, including inciting the whole audience to chant 'F-T-T' at him for a whole minute, before joining in himself - 'Fuck-The-Temps-Fuck-The-Temps---'

They're hard to keep tabs on - and it's hard to know who to keep your eye on, or what'll happen next. Songs play with structure - jolting silence into the middle of songs before blasting out a second half, performing with all their heart ruthless, raw slabs of the sort of angry, dark garage-punk which is as close to perfection as it may ever get.

You'd be a fucking idiot to miss any of their live shows. Seriously.

Destined. For. Greatness.

The Temps Myspace: http://myspace.com/thetempsliv

Evol Presents: New Young Pony Club @ Korova *w/ Is Tropical and Teeth.

PHOTOS BY SAKURA: http://www.rockphotographer.net

Let’s set the scene a little. It’s approximately 28 hours until the clocks go forward to officially fly the fine beginnings of British Summer Time - whatever that entails, probably one day of absolute sun, followed by dozens of desperate attempts to spark a BBQ under a succession of light showers - and the past ten day forecast has been grey skies on grey bloody skies.

Yuck.

There’s ways to replicate the hot, delicious atmospherics of the Summer though, amongst all the remanding coat-still-on gloom. If you like the idea of waking up with skin more orange and leathery than a St Johns market knock-off handbag, you can always wile your hours away on the sunbeds. Alternatively, a bass heavy, electro pop, thunder raucous of a band night can also do the trick. Sweat drenched, dance related humidity and all.

Luckily the couple of hundred of finely dressed, radiant young men and women cramped into Liverpool’s Korova have opted for the latter tonight. And they’re in for an absolute, ridiculously high-charged treat that half makes you wish you’d worn some kind of beach wear instead of the usual Korova uniformed cardigan and / or leather.

Second support act Teeth - with apologies to first support act, the amazing Hallo...I Love You! who Purple Revolver sadly, sadly missed to grab some rat-nasty dinner - help to kick things off with amazing fucking aplomb. Front woman Veronica, a hoody-caped storm of she-howling irrepressible energy, conducts the set with a Bikini Kill style gusto of charisma, snarls and at times sweetly near-monotonous vocals. Drum skins get pounded to oblivion and a laptop bearing third member bobs around beside her, arse shimmying, grinning deliriously and button pushing rhythmic, pulsating electro melodies at the audience.

Veronica even bravely attempts a circle pit in the middle of the set but only manages to peruade the members of third support act Is Tropical, stood at the side of the stage, to bravely step in and run wildly about with her. The song ends and a terrified looking audience stare jaws agape at this bombastic youth who surveys the edge of the crowd, ‘Remember dong Geometry in school?’ she laughs, ‘this is just like - look!’ - she drags her hand around the edge of the semi-circular gaping void she’s just created - ‘a perfect fucking circle!’

Circle pit fear-defiers Is Tropical take to the stage next. Managing to accomplish some outstanding on stage visuals thanks to some very dark mood lighting, back projection of tropical scenes and faces hidden by fantastic looking bandit scarfs, their set is a pep dominant, synth-infested, lyrical slacker-pop fest.

Particular set highlights Seasick Mutiny and When O’ When are prime examples of the smile inducing casanova indie charms Is Tropical have to offer. Seasick Mutiny - a synth-convulsed, cheerful swagger of a tune belts on menacing and bass-jovially divine, whereas When O’ When provides mind defacing catchy hooks, and doss Parisian waltzing which bursts into a fervent, hustling pulsation of anthemic addictiveness.

It’s no surprise that following a rare succession of such awesome support acts as this, that the audience are riled up and crowd crushingly anticipative for New Young Pony Club.

Christ alive, they’ve barely played even half a song and the audience are bustling wildly amongst each other, it’s packed so deep and so eager for the trip in here that you literally can’t move without grinding up against some absolute total stranger.

Front woman Tabitha is dominant, stunning, raw - a one woman chemistry set of fiery, snaking movements, intent on making sultry, humble eye contact with every appreciative person in the audience.

Their set tonight is perfect. Songs off Fantastic Playroom sound re-worked and fresh - their sound at times even resembles the bass bleating, more tropical sounding of Bow Wow Wow’s back catalogue (not least of all because of Tabitha’s new hair stylings closely resembling that of Bow Wow Wow’s front woman Annabella Lwin). This is most evident on Hiding On The Staircase, in which the more exotic elements of the songs original structure are drawn out and exaggerated into a dance-o-matic, bass heavy dream. The chorus and hooks are given a bigger role and embellished into infectious, repetitious statements.

New single Chaos, too, is another prime example of NYPC prowess for performance. Loud and powerful - melody and chorus sound brighter and bigger, and with an intimate pronouncement of personality blasting proudly and uncontrollably through.

The crowd is a sweaty, make up smeared mass dance off by this point. Tabitha pauses breathlessly between songs to thank the audience again and again, and to taunt them into a further fevered excitable glory.

‘I just want to say how amazing it is that so many girls have come to the gig tonight...’ she says at one point, looking genuinely delighted by the fact - and rightfully so, it’s still incredibly rare to attend a gig in which more than half the audience are bloody female.

A cover of PJ Harvey’s deconstructive gender role classic Dress is a nice addition to the set, and non-surprisingly one which the audience laps up. Impassioned and with NYPC’s style still imprinted all over it - the songs delivery is forceful and defiant, but never loses touch with the bands five man mission of dance induing excellence.

The set finishes in a pit of sweaty, over-exerted exhaustion. The crowd are red faced and wilting and Tabitha is panting away on the floor of the stage with a towel over her face. Heres hoping that this Summer is even half as hot or as spring-heeled as tonights unintentional replication of it has been. We might have to all quit our day jobs and resign ourselves to sun soaked, dance ridden leisure for a couple of months if it is. Perfect.

New Young Pony Club official: http://newyoungponyclub.com/

Download NYPC's new album The Optimist here: http://bit.ly/crA70B

Teeth Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/teethdance

Is Tropical Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/istropical

Evol on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8926329069&ref=ts

Important Life Lessons (from 90's music videos) - Part 3

You’ve Got It (The Right Stuff) is really quite the sweet ‘bros before hoes’ morality tale on the surface. But if you’re willing to really dig deeper, and Gods knows Bleached Hem has gotten good at digging holes for itself lately (Re: Cycle Sluts From Hell), then you’ll realise a far darker ill-morality tale with many a murky, unwanted lesson to be gained from it.

Let’s begin with the whole bros before hoes issue. I mean, it’s that age old shitter of meeting the pal of your dreams, sharing a few scandalously magical months joined at the hip and playing old Mega Drive games round at theirs 5 nights a week, and then BAM! Motherfucker meets a new ‘special friend’ and before you know it you’re relegated to the once a month meet up slot once reserved for their poor, suffering mother.

See, that’s the great thing about New Kids. Here they are, singing this song about things going pretty damn smooth with their new respective lady friends, but - hold up son - they’re still finding the sweet time to rock it with their boy chums.

Look at them - goofing off, joyriding in supposedly stolen cars and spending the rest of their free time co-ordinating heavily choreographed in sync dance routines with each other. Damn. That’s what bromance is all about - being totally in sync with each other. To hell with that totally rad young lady. They’ll call her back when they’re done singing at each other, Godammit. Bitch can wait.

But then, look a bit closer and the whole thing starts resembling a pop video rendition of Larry Clarks epic aids ridden, teenage sex-terror film Kids (http://tinyurl.com/cwx7dk). Especially when they start pursuing that poor outnumbered trio of local underage girls and chase them into a bloody cemetery. I mean, come on New Kids - we know we’ve probably got bras older and with more sexual experience than you guys but still - that isn’t how you win a girls heart or even legally get into her knickers. In fact you’ve taken the whole bros before hoes principle to a totally dangerous new level.

The lessons we can take from this are so incredibly important that we’re gonna have to break it on down for y’all - New Kids style. Uh-oh-oh-woah-OH-OH!

One: Gentlemen. Bros before hoes = yes. Just don’t let the friendship enter Chasing Amy ‘I think we all need to sleep together’ territory. Especially in cemeteries. And especially with underage girls. And super especially if they look terrified out of their poor naive wits. Poor lambs. Get a grip fellas. You can take one night off a week from the lads to woo, romance and tap that ‘right stuff’ without turning it into an ill-fated group hang. We all know how they end, and so do the Police.

Two: Ladies. If your beau isn’t answering the phone and is turning up to your dates with his whole baby faced posse of jive limbed loser friends - get some self respect and ditch the chump. If you continue to see him, it’ll only end with you becoming a beer caddy during Friday night X-Box live playoffs, and you getting drunk and copping off with that freaky looking one in the hat in lieu of actual affection from your genuine boyfriend. And that is science fact. NASA did research.

Three: Stay outta the cemeteries, for Chrissakes.

Four: Shredded jeans and Bauhaus t-shirts make you look totally badass. Irrespective of age, badass achievements, and the fact that you’ve blatantly got no fucking clue who Bauhaus are, you ignorant pissing poser.
This, again, was also researched by NASA.

Five: We totally thought New Kids On The Block were dreamboats when we were five. But then, that’s exactly the kind of shit which boys like New Kids want you to think. In retrospect, they’re horrific, disturbing, sinister and haven’t got half a brain cell or even a quarter of good intentions between them. So err....what am I saying again? Oh yeah. Don’t have crushes on anyone. Ever. They only let you down. Yeah. Something like that.

Important Life Lessons (from 90's music videos) - Part 1

DJ JAZZY JEFF AND THE FRESH PRINCE -

GIRLS AINT NOTHIN BUT TROUBLE

Not to get the spanners out and re-open an old and under-utilized rumour mill, but well, anyone else remember those Will Smith gay rumours? Scientology...sham marriage...Hollywood rent boys...all that onscreen Fresh Prince Of Bel Air chemistry with Carleton?! Boy oh boy.

Girls Aint Nothin But Trouble, in retrospect, provides a whole lotta bubble to that squeak.

I mean, for starters, Fresh - you always were close with yo’homeboy Jazz, aint nothing wrong with that, but when you release a song publicly attempting to start a heterosexual coup against the female race through rhymes with said homeboy, you gotta start to worry.

For starters, this ‘Exotic Elaine’ you speak of - any broad with an alliterative double barrel name featuring a precursor adjective of a slightly saucy nature, is not one to be trusted. Particularly when homegirl looks of the same genetic ilk as RuPaul, dresses like a streetwalker and wears a weave that Marie Antoinette would have deemed overkill.

And Fresh, everyone knows, if you’re paying a ho to hang out with you she’s basically into casual prostitution, and if you’re flashing the dollar about then it’s within a mutual consensus that you want some smart price loving, and she wants to buy a tuna steak for her dinner tomorrow night. So whats all this about you freaking out when bitch finally starts getting aptly ‘fresh’ with you?

“She started grabbin all over me, kissin’ and huggin’ - So I shoved her away, I said, ‘You better stop buggin’”

Wait - what? Seriously - FRESH - let’s get real here. This is your argument as to why straight men everywhere should ‘remember (your) rhyme and get the hell away’ from girls? Christ. If you don’t want a slot machine to pay out, then don’t ply it with your pennies - IDIOT. And as for her/he screaming ‘rape’ on you at the end of the whole thing, well, that kind of a story might hold up in the patriarchal fun house of the law courts, but it sure don’t fly within the rhymes of a pop video. No. Sir.

Another lesson we can learn from Girls Aint Nothin But Trouble, is that one should never trust a broad who interrupts a crucial Mike (who??) Tyson fight / casual tequila binge to drag you back to her demonic, satin sheeted, Backdraft homage of a bedroom for no good dirty deeds (girl, you cookin a BBQ in the bathroom, or what? Crack open a window fo’Chrissake).

In the very unlikely scenario that a fine honey hunts you down at one of your more pitiful, lonely, drunken moments and offers you no-strings sex on tap, it’s probably only because she’s got her no-good hulk of a beau due home at any second, and she’s lookin for either A) a lameo, dreadful threeway B) an extra hand to get E4 to work on freeview or C) to get grave biblical vengeance on said beau for that RuPaul looking weave she found in the backseat of her Toyota last night.

Either way, you don’t want in. Just look at the Fresh Prince! Look at him! Outside in the snow in his goddamn knickers.

Should you find yourself in a similar situation, we highly recommend taking the cowards way out a la Fresh Prince. No-body likes a hero. Just look at R-Kelly - hiding in a closet with a baretta hoping to either shoot, stealthily hide or opera your way out of a scenario does nothing but escalate the situation.

Although, admittedly, hiding in a closet does work wonders for some situations huh Fresh?

Whatever, anyway - the main lessons to be learnt from Girl’s Aint Nothin’ But Trouble? Wearing La Cox Sportif for a date will encourage your girl to hide inside her house for three hours till you go-the-fuck-away (and don’t stand on the step and wait for her - even TV licensing officers have more self-respect than that).

Do decorate your bedroom walls with crudely painted pictures of Betty Boop, Felix the Cat, and the lyrics to your latest rhyme. It’s totally rad and will NEVER look dated.

And finally, don’t over-compensate for a hidden homosexual agenda. The fine honeys hate it.

Interview with Siobhan Fahey

Most of you will remember, fondly and with a skipped heartbeat of adoration, Siobhan Fahey as the incredible glam-goth figure from Shakespear’s Sister’s video for their big hitter of a single ‘Stay’.

Visually arresting with a vaudevillian array of dark make-up paired with a sparkling dominatrix catsuit, crown of glittering thorns and facial expressions spanning the sinister and the seductive, Fahey was a subversive breath of fresh hair in a stale industry of uninspired pop music. The song too was pretty fucking amazing. We played it till the vinyl was practically transparent.

Calling from Los Angeles over a particularly sketchy Skype-line, we’re discussing the transition Fahey made between the mainstream, bubblegum pop stardom of Bananarama to the slightly subversive pop artist she became with Shakespear’s Sister. Does she think mainstream pop is starting to finally experiment again with previously underground genres and darker themes?

“I do think there’s signs of that again” she begins, her tone thoughtful and her voice beautifully sultry, “I mean, God - pop music’s become a dirty word because of Pop Idol and manufactured pop taking over the chart and the radio in the past ten years. It’s been quite horrific really, so it’s refreshing to see people come along who look more interesting and sound more authentic, writing their own stuff.”

“Whenever the World gets too marketed, and too money obsessed and too status obsessed, then you get a reaction to that, I think. People are sick of manufactured rubbish now - the recession’s a great leveler. Art always gets more interesting in a recession”.

Anyone in particular that she thinks is pushing those boundaries?

“There’s no-one really that I find particularly amazing, to be honest with you. The closest thing I’ve come to being intrigued is La Roux.” She pauses, “And obviously Lady Gaga looks amazing, but her music’s appalling. It sounds like Hazell Dean! WAKE UP WORLD!” she declares emphatically, sniggering, “It’s style over content, she’s got an amazing voice but so do a lot of people down the pub, you know?”

Yowza. For some reason we imagined Fahey as intrigued as the rest of us by Gaga’s sexually aggressive stage performances and unrelenting visual style. But now our eyes are open - maybe Gaga really does just sound like ‘Eurotrash from the late 80’s’, as Fahey gigglingly puts it. Maybe we have been suckered in by style - again. Bollocks.

Fahey herself is an incredibly stylish lady. You can always count on those with punk rock ethics to spearhead an incredible sense of individuality with artful, expressive fashion choices, and to hell with what everyone else is wearing.

“Being an old punk, I believe in your right to look like an individual and express yourself in the way you look. I don’t spend a fortune on clothes - I’m not into the whole idea of wearing labels...” she pauses before laughing warmly at herself, “Although I do make the exception for Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen! Right now I’ve got this really fantastic McQueen suit with amazing space-age shoulder pads on a very narrow cut, like early Roxy Music, jacket with drainpipe pants”.

Colour. Us. Jealous. Understatement? Completely. In fact, it’s been scientifically proven that 1 in 3 people with immaculate taste turn to total dreamy jelly whenever they hear the words ‘McQueen’, ‘Space-age’, ‘Shoulder pads’, ‘Roxy music’, and ‘drainpipe pants’ in the same sentence.

What is abundantly clear is that Fahey - who at 53 years old is at an age which our horrifically ageist society condemns as being too far past 30 to do, well, anything really, particularly if you’re a woman - is still undeniably punk rock. Any woman who can use a music festival as an excuse for a family vacation, deserves a belter of a high five as far as we’re concerned.

Her and her two sons (from her marriage to the Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart) have been to the Coachella music festival in LA together for the past four years, in fact: “My highlight of last years festival, which was really an amazing life moment that I actually cherished, was that I saw Leonard Cohen”, she gasps with adulation, “Oh, it was incredible! It was like being in a church when he sang Hallelujah - the whole audience swayed, and held each other and cried - it was amazing. Probably one of the best gigs I’ve ever seen in my life actually”.

Not only that, but rumour has it Fahey has also done magic mushrooms with her sons (it’s okay, they’re 18 and 21 before you start dialing social services). True story?

She laughs, “It was their friends that gave it to me behind their back! And of course, double standards apply - I mean they were outraged that their mother had taken their friends magic mushrooms”.

Which brings us to talking about London in the 80’s. An overspill of excess from the 70’s punk scene combined with an overkill of grandeur from the decades optimism of ‘new money’ meant that drugs were rife, self-destruction was common, and there was plenty of opportunity to fuck up on hedonism.

“I kind of remember the late 70‘s, early 80’s much more strongly than I remember the mid or late 80’s because they were really quite pivotal times in the culture. I was very young and it was a magical time, but my memory of it - maybe I was hanging out with the right people, or maybe the wrong people - but we weren’t doing drugs. Or at least not the drugs that people later got addicted to, you know, cos they were too expensive!”

“I guess what happened was that in the mid 80’s, everyone that I knew in the early 80’s who had been really inspiring had fallen foul of heroin. I don’t know quite what happened there. I guess it started off with ecstasy...but yeah, I saw a lot of people nose dive. I don’t know why - didn’t they read the double page spreads in The News Of The World when they were growing up? I did! And it warned me off! When you’re 10 you salivate over seedy lifestyles.”

Does she pay much attention to the tabloids these days?

“Not any more. I totally cut the tabloids out of my life because it depresses the hell outta’ me that people are that unscrupulous.”

I tell her about the disturbing trend of tabloid journalisms’ morbid fascination with watching female artists and tabloid stars self destruct - almost putting a timer on the sensitive, over-worked and over-exposed minds and bodies of the successful, talented and the famous and waiting for the cynical, money grabbing, messy pay off.

“Well, I don’t buy the tabloids and I don’t read the tabloids, so it’s news to me that they like to watch female stars unravel. Obviously, Amy Winehouse and her drama was a kind of a national obsession for a few years, and I think that was probably because she’s so brilliant that it’s horrible to see such brilliance go to waste. It’s like McQueen dying - it’s a terrible loss to the culture - it’s our own personal loss, you know?”

Fahey could have wound up as another ‘troubled female star’ herself, especially if the culture would have been as fame-baiting and papp-aggresive as it is now. In 1993 she faced her own battle with a severe depression and admitted herself into a psychiatric unit.

“It was useful to me at that particular junction in my life,” she expounds, openly, “it’s just an opportunity to get off the merry go round and be able to take stock of things. There was a good friend of mine who followed me into the clinic two weeks after I got admitted so I spent the whole time nursing her!” she laughs.

“I’m not really somebody who thinks that therapy is necessarily the answer to your problems. I’m somebody who’s always been able to identify and talk about my problems to my friends and the people around me anyway. It’s probably much more useful to people who aren’t able to do that. I find salvation in taking a more spiritual overview to life and when you can do that, it totally alters your perspective”.

We decide to get away from such a heavy topic of conversation much to Fahey’s delight, “It’s only nine in the morning here!” she shrieks, amused, whilst we apologise and take ratio of the probably uneven and unfair caffeine keel between us, and move on to talking about her music.

Shakespear’s Sister’s most recent album Song’s From A Red Room (the red room in question being Fahey’s actual bedroom, a “fantasy bedroom, with red silk damask walls, like a womb or a sanctuary”), is a delightfully dark pop-synth hidden gem pitched somewhere between the sublimely sinister and the acutely seductive.

Bitter Pill from Song’s From A Red Room was partially covered by the Pussycat Dolls, who turned it into a bizarre amateur mash-up with Donna Summer’s Hot Stuff taking place of Fahey’s original chorus. How the Christ did that happen?

“In a totally fortuitous and random way,” she declares, the words audibly clambering fiendish out of the corners of her no doubt tickled grin, “a friend of mine manages the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs, and I’d given him a couple of tracks of mine to listen to and he was going into Interscope to have a meeting about them.”

“Interscope we’re putting together the Pussycat Dolls project and they were looking for songs, he played them Bitter Pill and the A&R man loved it and they got in touch and asked if they could use it. So I sent them the files, and they replaced my vocals with theirs.”

“It’s a totally different track though. My chorus, which is ‘Bitter pill to swallow, can’t see tomorrow...drowning in sorrow’!” she laughs, “Oh! I think that’s a bit too dark for the Pussycat Dolls, so they didn’t use my chorus, they supplanted it with Donna Summer. So it’s kind of a travesty - a musical travesty - in my view. But hey, financially it paid for me to actually record Song’s From A Red Room”.

Shakespear’s sister are touring the country from April 15th, what can we look forward to from her live show?

“Well, I’m really, really happy to be playing live again with the band. The last time I did a Shakespear’s Sister gig was, I think 1997, although I was doing some little underground performances in electro clubs a few years ago, but it was really pared down, so it’s great to be playing with a full rock’n’roll band with four fantastic album worths of songs to draw from”.

As to what else to expect from the live show, Fahey’s keeping pretty schtum, except to mention that she’s going to look damned amazing:

“Well, I’ve got a pretty cool costume, that I designed myself. I’ve got a beautiful headdress which is VERY important, since I’m playing very small places and people can probably only see my face. So I’ve gotta have a good head”.

We seriously can’t wait.

Shakespear's Sister will be touring the UK at the following dates and venues:

Thu 15th April 2010: O2 Academy, Sheffield


Fri 16th April 2010: O2 Academy, Liverpool


Sat 17th April 2010: O2 ABC, Glasgow


Sun 18th April 2010: O2 Academy, Newcastle


Tue 20th April 2010: O2 Academy, Bristol


Wed 21st April 2010: O2 Academy, Birmingham


Thu 22nd April: London Bloomsbury Ballroom

You can buy tickets here: http://www.ticketline.co.uk/shakespears-sister-tickets or from the usual ticket peddlers.

Shakespear's Sister official: http://www.shakespearssister.co.uk/

Buy Song's From A Red Room here: http://tinyurl.com/yf4lxvl

Albummm Revuuue: Sweet Apple: Love & Desperation

Oh dear. We’re not sure how we feel about the cover art to Sweet Apple’s Love & Desperation - we get it’s referencing of Roxy Music’s Country Life, but seriously? The whole thing screams of cheapness and that poor brunette looks more than a little malnourished. We might even have to start rubbing a Sayers cheese pasty on her sleeve notes in the hope that we might achieve some voodoo act of getting meat on her bones from afar.

Oh well.

Anyway, the album, which could probably be renamed ‘When I Get Sad, I Get Rad’, see’s John Petkovic working through a multitude of personal tragedies and anguish with fellow Cobra Verde bandmate Tim Parnin, and Dinosaur Jr.’s Jay Mascis.

Conceived from an aimless and dejected cross country drive following the death of Petkovic’s mother, Love & Desperation bears all the classic hallmarks of anthemic motor rock collections. The kind of stuff that spirited middle aged men everywhere blast out of their pride and joy on four wheels on hot summer days. It’s an engine chugger alright, but it’s a little easy listening. A little arena rock. A little half arsed and little else.

It’s strong points lie in it’s emotional density, and it’s ability to take a particularly heavy lyric and offset it against an upbeat and resolute riff of defiance.

For the most part though, it doesn’t stand out in a crowd. It has the potential to be amazing - but instead it sounds somewhat half finished, with a guitar sound that at times resembles something that you might have heard on a copy of Wayne’s World for the Megadrive.

There are a couple of diamonds in the rough. Kind of. Hold Me, I’m Dying is pretty fucking catchy, and contains the instantly relatable lyric, ‘we’re dying/ So let’s fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck till we die’, and Dead Moon has a dreamy cadence to it which is refreshing amongst all the chug-chuggery of the more cock rock elements of the album.

But then songs like Do You Remember and Flying Up A Mountain sound a bit like Jack White has thrown all the songwriting scraps from his own supergroup projects and left Sweet Apple scrabbling about for them, furiously trying to construct something worth high fiving over later. The end result is stagnant and uninspiring, covering well tread - if not distinctly OVER-tread - ground, and is unfortunately forgettable.

In short, Love & Desperation is so sadly disappointing that I might have to do a cry, wipe my tears away with my Dinosaur Jr. tee and scream ‘MASSSCIIIISSS, NO!’ at the top of my lungs in a psychotic bundle of upset in an unmoving car somewhere.

Heartbreaking. Truly.

Love & Desperation is released on April 19th.

Sweet Apple on Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/sweetapplesongs

Live review: Japandroids @ Korova w/ Apple Cannon, Cold Ones, and We Come Out Like Tigers, 27.02.10

Oh, Apple Cannon. Let it be known that the lingering lethargy from Friday night boozing, and the onslaught of groggy head that attacks following the ill-advised late afternoon pints are blasted the fuck out of the evening by your storm of deliciously loud skin peeling thunder rock.

The red and green clad duo (drummer and guitarist, both sharing bombastic throaty vocal duties - what more do bands need these days?) are like a mental hygiene program, providing a sonic boom of Kyuss-esque brain cleansing doom.

From the palatably basic but feverishly fine riff-attacks of ‘Oh YEAH’ to the divinely catchy stoner-metal of ‘Lightning Mask’, it’s suffice to say that we’re well awake. Wide eyed. Buzzing. Jittering. Over-stimulated. This must be how Lindsay Lohan feels at 4am on a Wednesday morning.

Get the bevvs in lad! I’m good to go! I’m all over it!

Cold Ones too, don’t disappoint. The sound quality’s a bit iffy, to say the least with frontman Russell, high-voltage loud and energetic as he might be, not able to contend with the sheer noise of his bandmates performance. In fact it’s doubtful his microphone’s even on at some points. But fuck it, it’s hard to give a shit when a band can grant an after-song applause made up of high-fives all round like CO could.

High energy old-school hardcore punk. We never thought we’d see the like ever play in Korova - used to be that the hardcore scene were shuffled away to play gigs out of wheelie bins and death trap basements on the outskirts of the city centre, like the Oscar The Grouch of the music scene. We’ve come a long way, you guys.

Frontman Russell, donning a kamikaze bandana and laughing out between song banter that is at times delectably cringe-worthy, is an uproarious, blur of refreshing psychosis. The entirety of the stage area, including the totally unstable ceiling, all become his own private play pen. In a brave salute to Ian MacKaye, he threads the microphone through the rafters of the ceiling before hanging off it by his knees and continuing the lyrical howlings’ that command your complete attention at all times.

It’s nerve racking stuff, that. We once saw a fly stumble onto one of those rafters only to bring half the fucking ceiling down. Luckily, the CO frontman dives off unscathed. Whew. CO are everything you could want from hardcore punk. Loud, fast, pummeling, raw. They’re unyielding and fun - that’s right FUN. I can’t remember the last time that adjective was applied to the local music scene, but there you go. True Story, yo.

We Came Out Like Tigers are less so. In fact they’re a bit of a downer. We suddenly feel like Lindsay Lohan at 7am on a Wednesday morning when all the nose sugar has left the blood, and you’re left wondering what the fuck happened to your life, lovers, career and evening. Boo-fucking-hooooo!

Make no mistake, they’re an alright band - at least technically - but they just don’t seem to work within the context of the gig. Their arrival onstage, particularly having followed Apple Cannon and Cold Ones, is kinda like walking straight from a party at it’s peak to a interview with the Dole, wherein you’re somehow serendipitously stuck sitting between two of your ex-lovers who winge at you for a whole half hour before being berated by pen pushers for being a total fucking sponge.

Nightmare.

The inclusion of a violin adds a nice level of melancholic, insistent drama to their set, and their opening song does have a tidy piece of spoken word in it, which is incredibly interesting, but a great many of their songs also tend to blur into the last one.

But then Japandroids take to the stage. And sweet child of mine, they are exactly the dreamy, scuzzy, riff-sultry heart grabbers that the hype machine warned us they’d be. Maybe even better than that.

‘Hi, I’m Brian, that’s David’ smiles guitarist / vocalist Brian pointing excitedly at his drummer, ‘we’re Japandroids from British Columbia Canada, and this is the last night of our European tour, so let’s get fucking wild’.

And wild they get. Feral, to be accurate. Kicking into The Boys Are Leaving Town - a catchy, upbeat number which builds up from it’s repetitive and gorgeously simplistic verses into it’s intensely epic chorus of ‘Will we find our way back home?’!.

The drums throughout the set are blindingly AMAZING. They punch through the flesh, the mind, the heart - they make the cans of Red Stripe in the hands of audience members foam up with vibrancy. Both of them are translucent in their energy - sparkling. Lithe limbed and discordantly sexy. You can’t take your eyes off them for a second.

Lo-fi anthemic, their minimalist brand of college rock is too infectious for words. Rockers East Vancouver, is performed with a rawness and exuberance that long outdoes it’s original recording, declaring lyrics loud and with a visceral permanence that’ll secure it’s place in the mind for days later. Wet Hair too, with it’s repeated lyrics of ‘She had wet hair/ say what you will/ I don’t care/ couldn’t resist it’, is just so insanely catchy and uproarious, that it’s impossible not to grin wide and beaming along to it. And sweet Christ, that drum roll at the end of the song nearly brings on a coronary. Sublime.

The audience is going ape-shit too. There’s at least more than a dozen people scattered around the place screaming hungrily along with every word - even along with the more obscure songs from the bands’ collection of older material.

The set is sadly blighted by a few technical difficulties. But as proved early on in the evening by Cold Ones, it really doesn’t much matter about tech issues so long as the set is attacked with vigour and exultance.

Except they do stop to fix it up.

They stop and stop and stop.The break seems to last a lifetime. Just when they seem to have it together, something else happens and the tech guy returns nervously tinkering with buttons while Dave sips water cooly on the drums and stares grinning at the audience, totally amused.

‘This is just like those buddy movies, you know, where like the cop is one day away from retirement and he suddenly get’s killed - this is kinda like the musical equivalent.’ he laughs.

Brian tries a thrum of a guitar riff. Something’s still fucking up. Dave continues, ‘We were so close! So close!’

But they get it together in the end, Lethal Weapon style, and storm the fuck on.

I Quit Girls, provides a melancholic change in tone and pace that is blissful, and more than a little spine chilling. All goose-pimpled downbeat, with their trademark lyrical repetition that wrings each word out dry, and cutting, but never drops it’s energy. ‘She was just one of those girls...After her, I quit girls’. Ouch.

The set seems to last an age. At times it becomes a trance like repetition of the tranquil, anti-tranquil, sublime and the rad. And yet it still seems to end too soon. You feel like screaming at the top of your lungs, Can We Keep Em?! Oh, Please! I Promise To Take Good Care Of Em! at the promoters. But instead they leave. Back to British Columbia Canada, and the audience looks so stoked from the experience that they may never sleep again. Lohan style.

Japandroids Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/japandroids

Japandroids official site: http://japandroids.com/

Apple Cannon Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/deathbyappleseed

Cold Ones Official Site: http://www.coldones.co.uk/

We Came Out Like Tigers Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/wecameoutliketigers

Interview with Dirtblonde

The term ‘cool’ has been expressively and adoringly chiseled into the marrow of Dirtblondes’ body of rock’n’bone over the many years of their loud, gnarly, scuzz shattering career.

It’s fixated on every review, winking feverishly at hipsters everywhere with the stamp of approval that Dirtblonde are an official rock’n’roll dream. The real deal. Jagger. Iggy. Leather. Snarling.

So when I ask them about what a typical Dirtblonde day entails, their response is refreshingly uncool by the standards of modern rock’n’roll cliche.

‘A day in the life of Dirtblonde?’ Ivan begins, laughing, ‘would probably be a boring one. For me at least it’d involve listening to jazz and stroking my cat’.

Lula smiles in agreement, she’s wearing a Twilight t-shirt which again is totally anti-cool by the provisos of being in a shit-hot band. To those of us who harbor deeply secret Edward Cullen fantasies, the move is cool-as-fuck. Most of us have to hide our collection of Twilight paraphernalia under the bed next to the porn.

‘There’s nothing worse,’ Ivan elaborates, ‘than people trying too hard to be rock’n’roll all the time. Save rock’n’roll for onstage - you don’t have to be like that all the time. I mean, Iggy Pop plays golf and Mick Jagger’s always been pretty mellow’.

They go on to say how they don’t really listen to the sort of loud music you’d imagine of them at home. Instead they prefer a bit of John Coltrane, Moondog, Dusty Springfield or a spot of Cat Power whilst cooking.

Liverpool’s a weird city. Maybe the epidemic is nationwide, but the trend for creating impenetrable cliques and scenes within the local gig market is one Liverpool finds itself foul to year in, year out. Dirtblonde, it seems, are very much the outsiders in this arrangement. It almost seems that they’re more appreciated outside of their home city, than they are in it.

‘It’s not contrived. I mean, we’re not trying to be outsiders, we just don’t belong to any scene.’ Lula shrugs, ‘I think every city must be like this - it’s pretty competitive’.

‘It’s frustrating’ Ivan continues, ‘I don’t know what it is, maybe because we’re influenced by more American music like Sonic Youth or The Stooges. We’re not really influenced, I don’t think, by the same stuff as the rest of the bands in the city’.

So what do they think of the Liverpool music scene at the moment then?

‘There’s a lot of different scenes around - I mean you’ve got the retro Zanzibar lot, and then you’ve Class A audio, and Pete Bentham’s free rock’n’roll stuff...and then you’ve got a lot of the-’ Ivan winces trying to think of a polite way to proceed, ‘-shitty local bands. Uninspiring.’

Lula adds ‘But there’s a lot of great music in the city. We’re both loving the Anti-pop label - The Dead Class, The Temps, The Fraktures. The Long Finger Bandits are great too, and Pete Bentham And The Dinner Ladies’.

They love, they say, bands with a lot of energy - it’s something they always come back to, a quality which is incredibly evident in their own guttural, brazen-kinesis of a live show. They cite performances by The Dead Weather and My Bloody Valentine as the most notable gigs they’ve been to over the years.

Lula explains, ‘It’s easy to be cynical about The Dead Weather because they’re a supergroup and Alison Mosshart is a bit of a poser or whatever. But they were just so raw and had such a good time - they weren’t trying to prove anything. Alison Mosshart was just so unbridled and getting in everyone’s face. It was so exciting’

Whilst Ivan - a man with possibly the loudest guitar sound Purple Revolver has heard in recent years - thinks back dreamily to the My Bloody Valentine gig

‘It was just how loud it was. You could feel it in your body - the physical nature of the sound! Such energy, again’.

Dirtblonde are a band also notable for their experimentations with mixing spoken word pieces with rock’n’roll. Lula herself had a book of poetry published last year - At 3 o’clock I Think Of Sex And Death - and also co-ran Heartbeats, a rock’n’roll poetry night which has sadly escaped Liverpool’s clutches and moved down to London.

‘It’s always on the cards that I might bring it back on here’, Lula grins, ‘but I never set out to be a poetry promoter. I don’t want to be in charge of starting a poetry group or anything like that. Heartbeats was just fun - we wanted people to develop their performance, and get confidence about their work and move it out of their bedrooms and share it with people. We heard a lot of amazing work at those nights’.

We end with the token Smash Hits hypothetical question. Dirtblonde are at a party. It’s lame as fuck. They’re falling asleep. They open one last beer when Lo And Behold! A bloody genie pops out! He says he’ll grant them the presence of any 5 people of their choosing to arrive at the party and save the night, who do they pick?

Their eyes light up.

‘We have this discussion all the time!’ Ivan beams, laughing.

‘God, we do seriously discuss this all the time, and now that you’ve asked us I can’t think of anyone’, Lula adds grinning and spooling her mind through past ‘dream dinner party’ discussions.

‘Kevin Spacey!’ Ivan shouts out, ‘Oh! And Stephen Fry. And Jeff Goldblum! And Paul Rudd too. We have to have Paul Rudd’.

‘So I guess there’ll be no women, then?’ Lula interjects, laughing.

‘No, no - what about that comedian? Janeane Garofalo? She’d definately be coming to the party’,

‘And the Cheerleading coach from Glee - Jane Lynch. Her too. Definately’.

So what have Dirtblonde got in store for the future?

‘We’re gonna re-record and do a music video for our song Brooklyn. We’re gonna film it in the Laundromat on Aigburth Road’ They smile at each other in excitement. ‘It should be cool. Laundry rock’n’roll...’

Sounds awesome. We’re sure it’s going to be anti-cool, cool as Dirt.

Dirtblonde words: http://dirtblonde.wordpress.com/

Dirtblonde music: http://www.last.fm/music/Dirtblonde

Dirtblonde photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8861519@N03/

At 3 o’clock I Think Of Sex And Death by Lisa Jones (AKA Lula) is available to buy online here:

http://spikepublishing.wordpress.com/buy/ and is also available from Probe Records and News From Nowhere.

live review: Dirtblonde @ Hurdy Gurdy, Badformat, 19.02.10

Oh Hurdy Gurdy, file this one in the ‘Lesson Learnt’ drawer and move on. Essentially - if a gig night has taken less than a fortnight to put together, you can pretty much expect it to be a bit of a tits-up, lackluster FAIL.

Hurdy Gurdy at Badformat is tonight reminiscent of those early teenage gig nights that used to go down in Heaven’N’Hell (remember that joint?!) and The Zanzibar absolute beards ago in which the audience was only made up of the bands and their mates. You know, where there’s about five people going ape-shit-with-restraint before some Ramones-rip-off band onstage, and about forty people ambling round the bar high-fiving the bloke they sit next to in sixth-form history for his totally slick guitar skills.

It’s Friday night. Badformat has no phone signal and is as far away from the part of town where all your mates are as is humanly possible in the city centre. This is the gig equivalent of the arctic circle, or a Twilight Zone episode in which apathetic, mean spirited music journo’s are locked in the same gig for eternity until they can learn to just be NICE.

In keeping with this spirit allow us to politely skip through the evenings events, briefly mentioning the total lack of atmosphere and the fact that most people are either huddled round the bar or sitting off on couches around the permitter away from the stage area (unless of course their mates band’s playing), and jump straight to the point where the awesomeness that is Dirtblonde takes to the stage.

Sadly for the cool as fuck, rock’n’noise duo, the performance feels like one of those mid-90’s music videos in which a cool as fuck, rock’n’noise band tear up the stage to a frankly unreponsive, oddly assembled audience (watch Zero by The Smashing Pumpkins or anything from The Dandy Warhols).

Dirtblonde don’t let this stop them though. Having draped the unused drum kit with red LED lights and their mic stands with bright, twinkling scores of bulbs they burst into a sublime racket of gorgeously low register, apathetic vocals and roaring, throaty, louder than apocalypse guitar. Backed only by their trusty drum machine (never underestimate the power of a Boss Dr-670), they’re downright dirt-o-matic, scuzz lusty perfection.

‘This one’s about being an obsessive fan of someone’ Lula announces before they break into Superfan - a riot act of want that sees Ivan dropping to his knees for it’s finale, screeching his fingers across fret boards causing an ungodly, visceral disturbance. He’s bowed upon the floor for the act, as though in begging before a shrine.

There’s a cheeky nod to Patti Smith too, with His Name - a Gloria-esque spoken word, locomotive dreamscape of tersely built up raw pleading rhythm which is sumptuous for Lula’s honeyed delivery and Ivan’s chug-chugging accompaniment.

‘Here’s a slow one for those of you who don’t like too much noise...’ Ivan grumbles into the mic, probably at the scores of lifeless people by the bar shouting over his pneumatic guitar sound, no doubt wishing they were sat in the quiet of The Everyman Bistro eating quiche and discussing the misanthropic merits of silent discos.

They kick into Brooklyn, a plummeting, lost-soul of a song that pines and longs and hammers on with an underscore of melancholy juxtaposed by a determined, swinging fist of a riff that never quite makes the punch, but is opulent in it’s doomsy ongoing threat.

Their finale is as blissfully destructive as they’re notorious for. A Rock’n’fuck-it kick of the bucket that descends from sexy, heavenly moans to a riff-babel infestation of discordant destruction. Lula hangs her head like an unused puppet and bashes bass with an amorous determination for decorum whilst Ivan swings his guitar about the place like Leatherface with his chainsaw, before attacking the LED lights draped around the drum kit. He pulls them off and around him, becoming entangled like Mowgli fighting a neon snake before falling to the floor and writhing about in a onslaught of pure, precious din.

The set is over.
A smattering of half-arsed applause spills out, and a couple of yelps that sound more like the faulty mechanisms of a flare gun than a verbal accolade. It feels like Dirtblonde may as well have been playing in Sayers for all the good it did them, but then that’s Liverpool for you.

But sod it. Dirtblonde - Purple Revolver salutes you. Come round and fuck our office up anytime you want - you’ll probably get more of a crowd, too.


Dirtblonde words: http://dirtblonde.wordpress.com/
Dirtblonde music: http://www.last.fm/music/Dirtblonde
Dirtblonde photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8861519@N03/

The Ex & Brass Unbound, Stig Noise MMX and Zun Zun Egui live @ The Kazimier, Liverpool

Stig Noise MMX frontman Jacob is pacing about excitedly before yelping out at the already buzzing crowd ‘I can’t remember the last time The Ex played England, nevermind Liverpool’, he grins a wide coat-hanger grin which is mirrored back by the hollering, fervent crowd who’ve hungrily gathered in The Kazimier for the monumental occasion.

The set erupts into the finely tuned discordance for which Stig are consistently celebrated for. A melodic anarchy of brass, throaty lyricism, and killer onslaughts of bass, drum and guitar that never once veer far from perfection.

Each song is decadence - an irresistible array of limb twitching, unpredictable and mediated psychosis punctuated by the occasional spoken word vocal, dual drum finale and sumptuous tentative build ups of pace and noise that explode into a fever of hot tempered noise.

If this is the foreplay, you think to yourself, then fuck-help me when the main flesh scabblers finally arrive to headline later.

Second act, Zun Zun Egui are a little less exciting. Initially, they’re fucking outstanding - an audacious blend of the tropical, the tribal, experimental and downright doomsy. They begin songs down one path and without warning divert, screeching and attentively, down another totally subverting their own sound and the crowds expectations of it. But the formula wears a little thin and samey three songs into the set, and what was fresh and exciting to begin with becomes commonplace and predictable.

The frontman is charming and enthusiastic enough, shimmying, grinding and thrashing himself about the stage and the audience with enough energy to bring on an early Springtime, but his fellow bassist looks more than a little pissed off throughout the entire set, huffing and puffing after each song with the brattish expression of a young boy who missed his afternoon nap and didn’t get a biscuit with his glass of milk that evening.

But still, their sound is exactly what the audience is craving - the beats are heavy and the bustling bodies are busting out spazz-o-matic moves sponsered by Give A Shit How Stupid This Looks, I Gotsta Dance!

And then ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod - an entire ETERNITY passes before The Ex & Brass Unbound take to the stage, tune up, plug in and begin what is without a doubt one of the best live shows The Kazimier, and even possibly Liverpool, has ever witnessed.

That’s no exaggeration either. It’s so good that the vocabulary hasn’t been invented yet with which to do a review of them justice.

Featuring a line up of eight members (including 5 on brass), the post-punk no-wave legends are remarkable from the get-go. A flawless and dissonantly brooding performance off-set with shimmers of the jaunty and the relentlessly jazzy. Sweet Christ is it good. The vibe in the entire theatre is electric - the room awash with uncontrollable sweeping movement and spacious unbelieving smiles that will leave faces aching for hours afterwards.

Songs span intricately and incessantly, managing to explore songs within songs - the whole band looks ecstatic, and when you consider that this is a band that’s been around for about 30 years now, is a comforting and heart-warming thing to witness.

Their set develops an extensive range of genres, all played with a forcefulness that makes you bite your lip with such rapture that you might require stitches afterwards. Songs begin on triumphant, opulent levels and descend into a cacophony of debauched, poetic spewed noise.

A version of Hungarian folksong Hidegen Fujnak A Szelek is a perfect example of all this - seeing drummer Katherina Bornefeld take to the vocals, cow bell in hand, and create a sublime din of re-worked, idiosyncratic genius. A song which is by equal turns jubilant and disquiet at once.

Onstage camaraderie is big, the band beam at each other and are playful with the performance, hitting drum machine sampler buttons with guitar heads in sync, taking the piss out of the member of the brass band who dares climb up onto the above stage stage of the Kazimier to belt out a plunger muffled power bleat and at the some of the dancing going on in the crowd before them.

The band thankfully return for two encores - the highly desperate ear splitting screaming that follows their absenting of the stage leaves them with little choice - of unpredictable dance heavy joy. They end with a brass off which sees two of the brass band trying to tunefully outdo each other before crumbling into a myriad of onstage giggles.

Awesome - awesome - awesome. There just aren’t the words or the online space available to fully credit the gig with the praise it needs.

Put it this way, if you missed this gig you’re an absolute bloody fool. Simple as.