Neils Children

This is the first time I’ve caught Sean McLusky’s rabble-rousing noise collective at their new home in Shoreditch’s teeny tiny On The Rocks club. It’s an odd little place with big steps leading up to the stage and the bar reducing the dancefloor to about the size of a postage stamp. Personally I reckon the guys on the door are on the take but I was barely conscious with booze by the time I got there, so don’t send in the boys in blue yet…

The place may be half empty, but that isn’t gonna stop Starfighter-X raising hell with a full on maelstrom of Pop-Art noise. And I mean Pop. SFX have melodies as big as their hair. Boss tunes put through the Marshall grinder and propelled by vicious cymbal and snare breakbeats worthy of Alec Empire and his pals. One or two tunes almost have a perverse feel of The Selecter’s bounce in amongst the snarling layers of fuzz and clattering drums. Elsewhere, bassist Justin knocks a peppy hook that Jonathan Richman would have been proud to come up with back in his garage days. Tonight a borrowed amp lends the bass a Merseybeat twang which actually jars quite nicely with the drum’n’bass attack of the music’s darker elements. They sound (and look) nothing like, but I can’t help but think of The Who: Rumbling kinetic violence powering solid gold power pop through amps the size of Venus. With their silver T-shirts and tousled locks front man David & his drumming twin sister, sorry, wife Anastasia (I’m on to your game, young man…) resemble space-cadets from the planet Bohemia. But there’s no doubt they’re onto something serious here. While legions of garage bands dumbly ape the Stooges, Starfighter-X drag punk kicking and screaming onto the dancefloor and into the 21st century and if you’re asking, then I’m dancing…

If Starfighter-X’s noise was vicious, then Neil’s Children are psychopathic. Ear-coruscating feedback wails all through the few lulls in their jagged assault. The jerky spasmodic momentum of Magazine, **Wire, The Fall and other such ornery art-punk types welded to the sheer brutality of our old pals The ‘Oo. I think the guitarist was even playing a Ricky on one song, always gets my vote…shoulda smashed it though… Elsewhere more angular shapes are being thrown, maybe a hint of laughin’ Ian Curtis and his pals or even the good Captain himself creeping in through the racket. Their skinny ties and shaggy hair should see them sit well with the arty New-Wave-of-New-Wave set. Though whether hipster dance-punk loving types will swallow such an ear-rattling assault remains to be seen.