Action Beat are legendarily gonzoid noise bastards from Milton Keynes, playing skronky and fun guitar abuse with anywhere up to 14 members at a time. For this tour they’ll be an eight- or nine-piece, which means three or four drummers, a million guitarists and maybe the odd sax or violin dude. Signed to Southern imprint Truth Cult, they released sweet album ‘The Noise Band From Bletchley’ last year but live is where things take off – 60 date tours with no days off, playing toilet cubicles, windfarms, bridges or anywhere that will have their itchy, Glenn Branca and Sonic Youth-worshipping racket. Lots of great stuff here:
http://www.myspace.com/actionbeat
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztnaRT6-Tss
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLsB8CHDpag&feature=related
BRANDYMAN
Barely a few gigs old, Brandyman are already a dense and rocking mixture of black humour, metal riffing and tricksy stop/start dynamics. Featuring ex-members of Truckers Of Husk and Joy Of Sex, and with DC Gates of Gindrinker on black hearted vocal duties, Brandyman have no MySpace but you can download a recent, utterly great Adam Walton radio session for free from this here link:
http://brandyman.bandcamp.com/
SATURDAY’S KIDS
Totally great and still mutating mix of squally post-hardcore, strung out slo-mo creepiness and yowling metallic clang. Giant evolutionary steps at every gig. New 7″ on Art For Blind Records follows a split release with Evariste Galois.
http://www.myspace.com/saturdayskidsuk
Plus hot DJ ‘action’ from Lesson No.1
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A zillion peachy topless boys whooping it up around a giant concrete triceratops in front of some 1930s semis … ‘High Action’ is what you might call paradigmatic of Action Beat’s getting-pissed-in-the-adventure-playground take on minimalism, if you were a bit of a twat – the ten-strong band take a see-sawing Glenn Branca riff and whack the Banana Splits theme tune atop it, making for a scrappy, good-natured pileup between pop and no-wave skronk. Similar three-minute blasts populate much of the album, and are what Action Beat do best: simple, fast, pounding pop jams like ‘Manic Face’ and ‘Daddy Pesty’, on which the repetitions – often just a bunch of two-note riffs – sound both focused and feral, and with a Krautrockin’ drive.
http://thequietus.com/articles/01043-action-beat-the-noise-band-from-bletchley-album-review
Action Beat is an improvised noise/no-wave punk band from Bletchley (Milton Keynes), heavily inspired by early Sonic Youth, The EX, Glenn Branca and other avant guitar ensembles to create high-energy blocks of sound like sugar-and-alcopop-crazed kids, faces smeared with Sunny D and sherbet dip. Hailing from the culture-hole of Milton Keynes, the endless roundabouts to suburban boredom, Action Beat is a logical, couldn’t give two-hoots conclusion. Reward for their hefty touring schedule, which has seen them drop deeper and deeper into debt after their van died in Norway, came by way of their album released by Truth Cult, an imprint of Southern Records. With a core of around five musicians, their cast can expand to as many as fourteen for the live shows – at least three guitarists, a bassist and between one to four drummers, plus the occasional smattering of sax, violin or trumpet if they can get their hands on it. The whirlwind shows are the band’s secret weapon, and so far they have gained much recognition in the UK and Europe, by doing things in the only way they know how, by doing it themselves, and in it for the thrills. (Chinchillafest)
Buffalo Bar
Windsor Place
Cardiff
Monday 6th September
8pm
£5
Great poster by Adam Chard of Croatoan Design: http://croatoandesign.tumblr.com/
http://www.myspace.com/actionbeat
http://fortissimorecords.co.uk/
http://www.southern.net/southern/label/TCX/
http://www.thejoycollective.co.uk/
http://www.businessmanrecords.co.uk/
http://lessonnumberone.blogspot.com/
