Upset The Rhythm presents…
PROTOMARTYR
SAUNA YOUTH
BOMBER JACKETS
Tuesday 14 November
Tufnell Park Dome, 178 Junction Road,
Tufnell Park, London, N19 5QQ
PROTOMARTYR play a taut, austere rock that's been incubated in a
freezing Detroit warehouse littered with beer cans and cigarette butts and
warmed occasionally by space heaters. Short songs made for short practices, and
the band learned quickly not to waste time. Despite the cold, Protomartyr
emerged with a sound that is idiosyncratic but relatable, hooky but off-kilter.
With respect to the local predecessors, this isn't the primitive stomp of The
Dirtbombs or The Stooges' greasy roar. Punk works, kind of, even if it leaves
the hardcore kids confused. Post-punk suggests something too retro; indie rock,
something too precious. What Protomartyr is, is "stuck between the
cracks." If that's the case, though, they aren't alone. Protomartyr's
economical rock elicits comparisons to possible antecedents like Pere Ubu or
The Fall as well as local contemporaries like Frustrations or Tyvek (whose
frontman Kevin Boyer played bass in an early iteration of Protomartyr). Singer
Joe Casey's dry declarative snarl serves as a reliable anchor, granting his
bandmates (guitarist Greg Ahee, drummer Alex Leonard and bassist Scott
Davidson) the opportunity to explore textures and reinforce the rhythm section.
This is never more apparent than on the band's recent LP on Hardly Art, 'The
Agent Intellect'. A brand new album entitled ‘Relatives In Descent’ from
Protomartyr is due for release on September 29th through Domino, this show will
be in support of that new record!
SAUNA YOUTH are an evolving band of young future humans making truly irregular punk
not quite comparable to anything else. The band, attracted to the possibilities
apparent within a DIY philosophy have been self-recording and self-releasing
their own music since 2010, creating a number of seven inches, splits and
cassettes. Artistic affinities are pledged to Eddy Current Suppression Ring,
Pissed Jeans and The Intelligence, but as Kurt Cobain once asked "Why
can't we be both Black Sabbath and The Beatles?", Sauna Youth consistently
and urgently pose the question, 'Why can't we be both The Ramones and Steve
Reich?'. Sauna Youth's debut album, 'Dreamlands' was released in 2012 through
Gringo Records and Faux Discx, whilst the barn storming ‘Distractions’ album
came out on Upset The Rhythm in 2015. In the first 5 months
of 2017 Sauna Youth wrote and recorded a new album, holing themselves up in a
railway arch in Peckham employing automatic writing techniques, instrument
swapping and sampling the electrical interference constantly present in the
room. They wrote the final instalment of their trilogy based around the
fictional town of 'Distraction' - that has been home to their ideas from the
beginning. Upset The Rhythm will be releasing this record in the foreseeable
future, look out for lots of new songs!
BOMBER JACKETS are a three piece consisting of Russell Walker, Daniel Bolger, and Sian Dorrer. Both
Walker and Bolger will be familiar from the ticklish post-punk of The
Pheromoans, whilst Dorrer has a varied CV with groups such as Plug, and Ravioli
Me Away, and with involvement across London DIY nodes. 'Kudos To The Bomber
Jackets' is the horrifically wry new album from The Bomber Jackets. Following
on from 'Lister,' their debut for Alter, 'Kudos To The Bomber Jackets' has a
restlessness that takes broader strokes. It finds and holds a register of
meandering hope by setting the perverted detail of domestic minutiae against an
acutely self-conscious melancholy that cynically daydreams its way into an
awkward middle-ground between profundity and platitude.
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