I have recently booked 'Neptunes' first UK tour, which will begin on the 11th November at Zaks in Wolverton.
They are an incredibly gifted band, who sculpt all their instruments from bits of bikes, saws and various metallic parts. Any brits out there should make every effort to get to at least one of these shows.
I'm pleading with all Londoners on the forum to come to the show on 13th November at 'West One Four' in west kensington.
'West one four'
3 North End Crescent,
West Kensington,
London,
W14 8TG.
28 Bus or 1/4km from Olympia.
Show starts at 8.00pm, and tickets are £6.
Support comes from 'Collapse' - www.collapsexxx.co.uk, www.myspace.com/collapsecollapsecollapse,
Action beat - www.myspace.com/actionbeat
and Dawn Chorus - http://www.myspace.com/dcfortissimo
All mp3s at; http://www.misterrecords.com/neptune/FrameSet.html
BIOGRAPHY
Neptune's origins trace to 1994 as a student art project by sculptor/musician Jason Sanford, who, in order to create a new music medium while simultaneously destroying the posture of five young men, forged heavy, menacing-looking guitars and drums out of circular saw blades, gas tanks, oil drums, bike parts, VCR casings and miscellaneous scrap metal found in the trash. Neptune was assembled to showcase these Harry-Parch-goes-to-Thunderdome contraptions in the winter of the same year and has evolved into a full time band that has traversed the US and Europe, reaching as far as Croatia and Flagstaff, Arizona. The early guitars were haphazard and untunable, resulting in the atonal garage clamor of the early recordings. With several different members and collaborators over the years, the music has evolved with the instruments blending the traditional sounds of Rock & Roll with what sounds like mistake day at the ball bearing factory. The current three-piece lineup relies as heavily on home-made electronics as it does it's signature scrap metal instruments. With less guys and more gear, Neptune rocks like The Fall, clangs like Neubauten and drones like Faust with improvised and not-so-improvised songs that you can almost dance to.
Jason Sanford - baritone guitar, oscillator organ, electric thumb piano, bass, small electric spring, vocals
Mark Pearson - baritone guitar, 4 string slide, bass, oscillators, large electric spring, percussion, vocals
Daniel Boucher - drums, electric floor tom, telegraph noise box, bass dulcimer, contact mics, vocals
BANDS WE'VE PLAYED WITH
The Ex (4x), Liars (2x), Oneida (5x), Lightning Bolt (7x), Electrelane (2x), Flaming Lips Boombox Experiment, Zu (2x), Sixteens (2x), The Evens, USAISAMONSTER (5x), Blonde Redhead, Numbers, Gang Gang Dance, Enon, Dave Philips (2x), Erase Errata, Crack We Are Rock, Melt Banana, Uz Jsme Doma, Arab on Radar (5x), Wolf Eyes, 25 Suaves, The Phantom Limbs (6x), The Fleshies (2x), Stinking Lizaveta, Party of Helicopters, The Centimeters (5x), Gogogo Airheart, The Apes, Noxagt, Tunnel of Love (+8x), Sightings (2x), Six Finger Satellite, Roger Miller, James Chance & the Contortions, Can't/Jessica Rylan (+6X), Parts and Labor (6x), Fat Day, Nautical Almanac, Silent Block, Daughters, Crank Sturgeon (4x), Ex-Models, XBXRX...
PRESS & REVIEWS
PUNK PLANET MAGAZINE
PP #62, JULY/AUGUST 2004
The use of certain comparisons is warned against when reviewing records. At the top of the list are "if Band A and Band B had a baby..." and "if Band A and Band B were thrown in a blender..." This record sounds like a swarm of insects making a baby with a band in a blender.
(RR)
PITCHFORK MEDIA
June 21, 2004
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com
Neptune: Intimate Lightning [Mister; 2004]
If you were standing too close to them, you could have been severely injured. Neptune were crammed into the corner of Charlie's Kitchen in Cambridge, MA, ripping through a set of disgusting industrial post-punk, at once a tight, almost funky band and a piece of kinetic sculpture. Neptune aren't just another squad of noisy art-rockers-- they're a complete package, pulling up to venues in a psychedelic van painted with a giant merman (Neptune himself, one supposes), and emerging on stage (when the venue happens to have one) with unholy contraptions fashioned from scrap metal by guitarist/vocalist Jason Sidney Sanford. The drum sets are piles of oil cans, circular saw blades and assorted car parts, while the guitar and bass look more like medieval weaponry than traditional instruments.
And that night in Charlie's Kitchen, after already being flattened by Tyondai Braxton's bracing solo set, Neptune bassist Mark William Pearson was swaying wildly back and forth, the jagged prongs that jutted from the neck of his scrap bass mere inches from flaying the intrepid souls standing at the front of the crowd. It was quite an introduction, and it nearly goes without saying that duplicating the intensity of a live performance like that on a record is a tough proposition at best. But on Intimate Lightning, the Boston band's third full-length, they almost manage it. The short review is that it sounds exactly like what you'd expect a band that plays their songs on scrap metal to sound like.
The long review is a bit more complicated than that, but Neptune really do accurately approximate in their music the tragic and violent desolation of the auto graveyards from which they draw their raw materials. The fact that the guitar and bass are built from metal affects the timbre of the instruments, the bass sounding harsh, almost distorted, while the guitar rings with surprising clarity. Percussionists John Douglas Manson and Daniel Paul Boucher naturally sound like they're banging on archaic VCR casings, gutters and miter boxes, but they play their traps as though they were normal drum sets, with Boucher contributing occasional scrapings on a violinish contraption that's the most alien texture on the record. The cumulative effect of all this is a sound that's sort of familiar, but just off enough from a conventional arrangement to be disconcerting.
The songs are tightly wound nailbombs of rapidly shifting meters, clanging rhythms, and mathtacular start/stop passages designed for maximum sensory damage. Sanford's vocals are secondary, it seems, to the grotesque clatter surrounding them-- he whispers and growls squarely in the middle of the mix, perfectly content to let the pummeling grooves overwhelm his Dadaist lyrics. As such, the songs have little overt melodic content, but pretty melodies and pop sensibility are clearly beside the point when you're working in the same destructive tradition as fellow New England weirdos Lightning Bolt and Zealous Fuel.
It would be wrong to say that Neptune display a mastery of their craft, because in this context, the word "dominance" seems a lot more apropos than "mastery." Seriously, when the sick, militaristic groove of "Automatic" launches into its distorted reprise, there's no point in trying to resist; you just hunker down and let it roll over you like the sonic blitz it is. That night in Charlie's Kitchen, Neptune were more than dominant-- they were mesmerizing and seemingly omnipotent. Intimate Lightning can't compete with that, but it tries anyway, and it comes out brilliantly brutal for the effort.
-Joe Tangari
UK dates;
November 11-November 28
11. Milton Keynes - Zaks
12. Southampton - King Alfred
13. London - West Bar One
14. Brighton - Feebutt
15. Suffolk - White Heart
16. Bristol - The Junction
17. Milton Keynes - Bletchley Leisure Centre
18. Off (looking for a show)
19. Swansea - tba
20. Cardiff - Chapter Arts Centre
21. Northampton - Racehorse
22. Manchester - House party (shhh, it's a birthday)
23. Liverpool - Magnet
24. lancs - Hark 2 Towler
25. Leeds - Brudenell Centre
26. Aberdeen - The tunnels
27. Glasgow - tba
28. Edinburgh - Subway Cowgate
If you are interested in booking them for a show, particularly on the 18th, please contact me at fortissimorecords@hotmail.com
Cheers,
Don