If you ever want to know what Tom Waits sounds like waking up - with a hangover - in a ditch just outside New Orleans wearing a clown's wig and clutching a bottle of bourbon wrapped in a McDonalds bag, then you've come to the right place.
The Urban Voodoo
Machine certainly sounds like that, only a bit more intense.
And while not a new band, The Urban Voodoo Machine is new to you and that is all that matters at this exact moment in time... so deal with it.
And while not a new band, The Urban Voodoo Machine is new to you and that is all that matters at this exact moment in time... so deal with it.
Oh, and they are from jolly ol' England, which does seem a bit strange... especially for a band that sounds like they've inhaled too much Louisiana swamp gas during the course of their lives....
Don't look away. Face your fears. The Urban
Voodoo Machine is coming and even Resident
Evil President Trump is getting a little nervous...
Well, they aren't coming to America at the moment. But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't check your closets and look under your beds before going to bed. I mean, they COULD be here and we just don't know it yet.
Well, they aren't coming to America at the moment. But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't check your closets and look under your beds before going to bed. I mean, they COULD be here and we just don't know it yet.
Instead of me telling you their sorry tale, I figured I'd
pull their bio off of their website and force-feed that to you. I've even
added a few videos just so you can check them out. You’re
welcome.
'We know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: “Why
should I care about The Urban Voodoo Machine? They’ve been around for ages,
haven’t they? Aren’t they a novelty band who wears funny make-up? Don’t they
sometimes play jazz? Aren’t half of them dead or something?”
So bear with us, sunshine, cos you clearly need
educating.
The story starts with Paul-Ronney Angel, a man with a
double-barrelled first name. I could be a wanker about this and say the story
starts with Bon Scott-era AC/DC – with Tom Waits, or the Clash, Louis
Armstrong, the Pogues, the Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Johnny Cash, Lionel
Bart or Bertolt Brecht – but let’s stick with Paul-Ronney, it’s quicker.
Paul-Ronney Angel ate his parents and fled the fjords of
Norway with just a bottle of moonshine and several slices of decomposing fish
in his back pocket. (Before he left they tried him in the Norwegian Army – he
lasted a total of five hours.)
After that, Angel washed up in London during the dying
breaths of Thatcherism and took advantage of all that swinging London had to
offer: he sold The Big Issue, busked Johnny Thunders & Robert Johnson
numbers in Soho bus stops and played guitar for anyone who’d have him.
The Urban Voodoo Machine came to him in 2002 as a
fully-formed idea. He’d lead a band who’d play ‘Bourbon Soaked Gypsy Blues
Bop’n’Stroll’. They’d dress in black and red. There would be a LOT of them. And
their music would sound like a great night out in a dangerous part of town.
From the get-go, The UVM fused junkyard blues and stinging rockabilly with
mariachi horns, fiddles, sinister cabaret and punk rock tangos. “I wanted to
play rock’n’roll music with a different instrumentation,” says Angel, “taking
inspiration from everything from delta blues, latin and gypsy music without losing
the spirit and attitude of punk.” His lyrics – part Lemmy, part Bob Dylan –
made other (more acclaimed) songwriters sound totally. Fucking. Boring.
“We’re not Americana and were definitely not ‘retro’,”
says Angel. “I write songs about living in London right now. Although having a
shit time, no money, heartbreak, mental illness, addiction and suppression from
the big guy is kinda universal and timeless, I guess…”
“Yeah-yeah-yeah,” you’re thinking, “but can they cut it
live?” Well, there’s a reason why they’ve played Glastonbury, Download,
Latitude, Bestival, Hard Rock Calling and toured with The Pogues and New York
Dolls. With an act honed alongside the burlesque dancers, snake-charmers and
fire-eaters they call friends, The UVM have become one of the greatest live
acts in the country – terrifyingly bizarre, hysterically funny; a riot for the
eyes and sensation for the ears: a sing-a-long, drink-a-long, clap-a-long
affair.
In 2006 they launched the Gypsy Hotel Club in the
then-unfashionable part of London’s East End, Dalston, a monthly Bourbon Soaked
Snake Charmin’ Rock’n’Roll Cabaret night for likeminded misfits, movers and
shakers. Time Out Magazine wrote, “If you have 12 hours to live, spend it at
Gypsy Hotel!”
Magazines and newspapers have lauded them for their
“mariachi-influenced blues, whiskey-soaked country rags and punkabilly-style
rave-ups” (The Washington Post) and noted that they’re “drawing deep from a
dirty well where Tom Waits, Nick Cave and Dick Dale are enjoying a burlesque
all-nighter with Ennio Morricone” (Classic Rock). They became one of the few
bands that could appear on Clive Anderson’s Loose Ends on BBC Radio 4 and
Britain’s biggest heavy metal festival Download in the same year and win at
both.
In 2014, when Paul-Ronney named their third album Love,
Drink & Death! he had no idea what the year had in store. In October,
fiddle-player Rob Skipper died of an accidental heroin overdose, aged just 28.
Guitarist Nick Marsh (formerly frontman of Flesh For Lulu) fought throat cancer
throughout that year. He died in June 2015, aged 53. The Voodoo Machine
transformed themselves into a New Orleans-style marching band for his funeral.
The Urban Voodoo Machine Marching Band also played the Classic Rock Awards that
year – the only band to do so without electricity.
And that brings us to new album Hellbound Hymns. Marsh
plays on eight of its 13 songs. (Angel: “He was really putting the hours in
when he knew the cancer had come back. He was like, ‘Right, these might be my
last recordings with this band, so let’s roll the tape and make it a good
one!”) To borrow one of the song titles, it’s all mixed-up. It’s part wake,
part protest, part valediction – a party at the gates of hell – because the
greatest tribute you can pay the dead is to live life to the full: “We will
sing and we will dance/We will drink and we will laugh/We will not forget the
past and our fallen brothers…”'
Paul-Ronney Angel
– Lead Vocals, Acoustic & Electric Guitars, Mandolin, Banjo, Harmonica
George ‘Le Boner’ Simmonds – Trombone & Vocals
Slim –
Accordion & PianoGeorge ‘Le Boner’ Simmonds – Trombone & Vocals
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