Crushing Death & Grief dispenses:

QUACK QUACK + THE SAILPLANES + LES ADVENTURES SOUS LA MER
Wed 5th May @ The Portland Arms, Cambridge
Doors 8pm, £4 adv. from http://www.wegottickets.com/event/77419

QUACK QUACK
What is Quack Quack? A Yorkshire-based party-prog, post-jazz, guitar-free, polyrythmic instrumental rocking trio. They take simple, cheap keyboard melodies, add driving bass and then pulsing pan-continental drums. A bit like Can jamming with John Shuttleworth. Other comparisons could be made with Africa 70, Trans Am, Led Zep, the JBs, Stereolab and Holy Fuck. It’s pretty tricky to pin them down into any place musically as there’s clear influence from 60s and 70s jazz, dub, funk, DIY and improv rock, afrobeat, krautrock, prog, disco and electronic music, but they end somewhere miles away from any of these forms. They avoid the ‘quiet-loud’ clichés of a lot of instrumental rock music, instead pivoting their tunes around subtle shifts in emphasis and feel or sudden escapades into an illogical but utterly exhilarating musical conclusion. Throughout it all there is a consistent sense of foot-tapping savvy and, above all, F-U-N.

Formed in 2005, Quack Quack are bassist Stu Bannister, drumming keyboardist Richard Morris (also of Chops, Two Minute Noodles and Declining Winter) and drumming drummer Neil Turpin (also of Bilge Pump), a chap who made Lightning Bolt’s Brian Chippendale “… feel like a one-trick pony”. A mini-album and a 7? have been released by Run Of The Mill, and a new album should be out around the time of this gig on Cuckundoo Records. They are more of a live band, though, leaving no leg knowingly unjigged, and rock so hard that last time I saw them one of them passed out mid-set. Bring your dancing shoes and smelling salts.
www.thisisquackquack.co.uk
www.myspace.com/thisisquackquack

THE SAILPLANES
London quartet The Sailplanes celebrated releasing their noisy, Sonic Youth-y debut LP ‘A second, or ten years later’ a few years back by moving to Berlin. They moved back to Blighty after a bit, to start work on another one, but this time around they’re into songs. I reckon they sound like a load of post-punk bands such as Swell Maps, The Raincoat and The Slits, with elements of slightly more recent stuff like Life Without Buildings, The Lapse and Faraquet.
www.myspace.com/thesailplanes

LES ADVENTURES SOUS LA MER
MFU + Jellica = subaquaelectrojoyfest.
www.myspace.com/mfujellica

www.crushingdeath.com