Woodwork squeaks and out comes Creep Show. The post-rave, hardwired electronic congregation of Stephen Mallinder (Cabaret Voltaire, etc), Phil Winter (Tunng, etc), Ben ‘Benge’ Edwards (John Foxx And The Maths, etc) and US tunesmith John Grant play the Attenborough Arts Centre on 16th June, closing the venue’s summer season in synth-driven mayhem style.
Mallinder, Winter and Edwards have generated wild beat-rooted electronica as co-conductors of Wrangler for some time now, first convening in 2008 then going on to release the tense modulations of ‘LA Spark’ (2014) and ‘White Glue’ (2016). Along the way they met vocalist extraordinaire plus Wrangler fan Grant at the Sensoria Festival 2014, compared notes and from there Creep Show emerged in all its distorted glory.
Mallinder describes the four-way connection as a “collective consciousness built from discarded celluloid, dust and brown noise”, a deadpan downplay maybe of their provenance and the searing impact of Creep Show music. Their debut album as a four-piece, 2018’s ‘Mr Dynamite’, was a wild electro shake-up, angry, angsty and as a close to a lock-in at a pier-end arcade as you’d want to get. Now comes a second fabulous Creep Show episode with their new album ‘Yawning Abyss’ released on 16th June, the same day as this ACCA gig. So hold tight, this could be one surreal launch party.
And there’s more…. Brighton-based experimental artist I Am Fya will bring her own significant energy to the evening with deep grained reflections on family, place and identity. Expect intense sound collages of street recordings, brisk electronics, incisive vocals, dubness and agit beats including the premiere of her resonant new AV work ‘The Sun Will Kill Me’ (released on Rose Hill Records on the day of the gig).
Then, just to ensure all bases are covered, Bella Union boss, producer and previous Cocteau Twin Simon Raymonde will play a genre-flowing, pulse-raising DJ set in the centre’s café/bar after the live music extravaganza. From Lee Scratch to Arthur Lee via no-wave electric dance signals, it promises to be some coda.
Attenborough Centre for Creative Arts, Friday 16th June 2023, 8pm.
Get your tickets for Creep Show with support from I Am Fya and Simon Raymonde (DJ set) here