April 7, The Exchange | Photo: Harry Furniss
If you’ve spent any time exploring the Bristol music scene in the last two years there’s a good chance you’ll have come across Repo-man. If you haven’t then you’ve missed out.
If it was 1968; rather than trying to reproduce their own version of ‘back in the USSR’, they’d be the ones listening in morbid fascination to Waldo accidentally getting impaled by his long distance girlfriend in The Velvet Undergrounds ‘The Gift’. They’re a band who immediately ooze musical talent once they start performing but who use that and their imagination to surprise you at each turn. Bojak is a compelling front man who very immediately hooks you with his aggressive, often off beat and dissonant delivery of vivid lyrics containing phrases which are a paragon of oddities.
There is an unmistakable Gang of Four pace to them. Often like the song ‘At home he’s a Tourist’ the rhythm is persistent, but the band vehemently March’s in an organised mis-step with itself creating that gnarly tension which is delightfully broken as the music opens up into free flow before lumbering back into further hunched distorted steps. This is all seated amongst what feels like a collection of pointed Gothic Allen Ginsberg poems.
It would not be unfair to describe them as a musicians band as every seemingly incidental improvisation, if you look closely, is part of a carefully thought out larger strategy. Distinctly unique and an inspiring high point in the circuit to other performers who value something experimental. More Salvador Dali’s clocks than the Mona Lisa but certainly still art none the less.
Check out ‘Static Excess Strobe Effect’ right here:
