live music | | atractivoquenobello

It’s been a century since Italian futurist Luigi Russolo published his ‘Manifesto for An Art of Noises’ and developed the world’s first synthesiser. To mark the occasion, cross-platform collective Noise of Art are launching a year of celebrations for this important centenary in electronic music, beginning with a monster line-up of cross-disciplinary acts at London’s Village Underground Friday, May 17.

Topping the bill, with more acts to be announced is Eccentronic Research Council, featuring actress Maxine Peake. This will be the first time the Sheffield-based group will appear in London, since garnering critical acclaim for their 2012 album 1612 Underture, based on the renowned Pendle Witch Trials in 17th century Lancashire. The project mixes, music, performance, visuals and spoken word to produce subsuming transmedia storytelling with a message. See here for more info.**

The body isn’t even cold since California’s Mika Miko called it quits in late-2009 and already bands are pillaging and using the remaining members for their own ends. Texan garage and R&B melting-pot The Strange Boys have made no secret of their love for and affinity with the high-velocity, mostly-girl, misfits who injected the West Coast ‘Smell’ scene with their explosive energy and now they can call co-vocalist Jenna Thornhill one of their own. Having expanded the original four-piece to a half-dozen and following replacement of another ex-Miko Mika, drummer Seth Denham, the Austin-based band lives up to the city’s reputation as a melting pot of musicians and influences. As residents of the world famous SXSW festival and a geographically centralised location, The Strange Boys are a peculiar hybrid of myriad stylistic influences and regionally diverse band members.

Numbering two Californians and the rest of Texas, Illinois and New Jersey birthplaces, this third album Live Music is as difficult to categorise as is its regional loyalties. Following up the explosive power of their long awaited debut album The Strange Boys and Girls Club in 2009, the more visceral, considered and lyrically sophisticated follow-up, Be Brave, in 2010 tore the band away from inevitable comparisons to the history of American garage rock –from Black Monk Time up to The Black Lips –and well into ambiguous, though significant, song writing territory. Continue reading Curioser and Curioser