Jack James is the voice, a slender boy from Texas with a penchant for glitter and Oscar Wilde, who came down from another planet to be the rock star of the future. David Strange is the sword, a grisled poet and carpenter who can build anything, writing sonnets and summoning demons on his guitar. Kemp is the brain, a crazed scientist who composes prog riffs and surrealist visuals, leading the three into the great abyss.
Gunpowder was invented for fireworks. A spectacle of beauty. But somewhere along the way it mutated into The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Suddenly a village idiot could obliterate a Samurai without getting close enough to smell his blood type. A lifetime of training felled by a trembling finger. Video killed the radio star, but who killed JFK? Pop culture popping a cap as incels pop pimples and Kendall Jenner proffers soda pop to angry mobs. Semi automatic, autoerotic. A Glock as reproductive organ that inseminates life in reverse. Rap, country, cop and anarchist alike can all agree on one thing: the gun as penis.
Musically, they gleefully crush the zeitgeist beneath their fashionable heels, opting for a mix of ’70s art-prog and sludge metal, as filtered through a more gothic sounding Smashing Pumpkins (trust us, you’ll get it when you listen to it). Singer Jack James’ ghostly falsetto only makes the proceedings all the more eerie and disconcerting.
Bassist/director/model/ennui-coordinator Charlotte Kemp Muhl (who is also in Ghost of a Sabre Tooth Tiger with Sean Lennon), enigmatically explains, “Crispr, gene drive, cosmetic surgery, eugenics, life extension, uploading consciousness to the cloud, bifurcation of those that can afford it and those that cannot…we are entering a post-flesh world. ‘DNA’ is about our severance with all that makes us human and entering the next phase of evolution, molding ourselves into digital Demi Gods with perfect silicone bodies. Would you make this Faustian deal with technology, or retreat to the forest…?”
Distributed by Chimera Music
The Fat Angel Sings 