CURRENT AFFAIRS + ES

Upset The Rhythm presents…

CURRENT AFFAIRS
ES
Wednesday 19 October
Mascara Bar, 72 Stamford Hill, London, N16 6XS, UK
7.30pm | £8.00 | Tickets: https://link.dice.fm/Qafa677add88

CURRENT AFFAIRS are a band from Glasgow marrying 80s pop sensibilities with ferocious post-punk, neatly navigating the line between new wave and goth. Singer and keyboardist Joan Sweeney (Aggi Doom, the Royal We) tempts you with catchy melodies and powerful lyricism.  Drummer Andrew Milk (Shopping, Pink Pound) provides nonchalant backing vocals and a solid rhythm section with driving bass from newest band member Gemma Fleet (The Wharves, Order of the Toad). Sebastian Yami (Comidllo Tapes, Pissy) completes the ensemble with an intricate chorus-laden guitar that will lift you off your feet. The band’s recent LP Object & Subject’ (on Tough Love) is the accumulation of the band’s output over three years, now gathered and synthesised into one convenient disc. A debut LP proper is being readied currently!
https://currentaffairs.bandcamp.com/

ES is Maria Cecilia Tedemalm (vocals), Katy Cotterell (bass), Tamsin M. Leach (drums) and Flora Watters (keyboards). Their 2016 debut EP, Object Relations, released on influential London punk label La Vida Es Un Mus, was described as “mutant synth-punk for our dystopian present” (Jess Skolnik, Bandcamp, Pitchfork). The band has since become a vital presence in London’s underground DIY music scene, and has toured the UK with the Thurston Moore Group in 2017. ‘Less of Everything. The title of Es’ first full-length LP (on Upset The Rhythm) could be interpreted as a manifesto pledge, an outright demand or a purely literal sonic descriptor of the London quartet’s glacial form of punk rock music. This tension between intent and interpretation has been a fundamental element of the group’s output from their formation. The dynamic between Cotterell’s bass and Watters’ keyboard is at the heart of Es’ sound: intertwining sub-zero melodies, gothic anarcho-punk influences and some kind of entirely unlocatable aquatic component. Combined with Leach’s precise drumming, the outcome is original and immediately recognisable. This provides the perfect backdrop for Tedemalm’s relentless, pointed vocal style. While comparable ‘cold’ sounding groups might affect an impersonal, safer mode of lyrical or vocal detachment, Tedemalm’s strategy is to “push the lyrics as far as I can thematically until they become absurd … overly dramatic … while still being sincere in the feeling they’re trying to invoke.