The Australian drums and guitar duo xNoBBQx are frequently compared to North American noise-rock legends Harry Pussy and Mouthus et al., but as its members Nik Dan and Matt Earle suggest, that’s only a point of reference for hipsters and themesters. Their deconstructive seizure punk might be a more direct channeling of the disobedient spirits on our own Bruce Russell’s legendary Xpressway label. ‘If the Dead C are the AMM of punk rock’, Seht’s Stephen Clover has suggested, ‘then xNoBBQx are a stop-motion Morton Feldman’. While sandwiched between the shitgaze and ethereal fog-dub of their Siltbreeze siblings, Ex-Cocaine, Psychedelic Horseshit, Fabulous Diamonds, Times New Viking, Pink Reason and US Girls, No Barbecue depart for an even further offworld plane, espousing a kind of gravity-irrespective devotional gamelan that’s dialed back to earth in splattered fits of melted free-jazz, ruptured Hendrix shreds and asteroid No-wave. Dan built his own kick drum out of a washing machine and Earle lists faith, danger, and Eric Clapton amongst his primary influences. ‘Dusty, primitive auto-shop floor oil-gunk from a couple of mono-syllabic jolt-action retards hailing from the hills of New South Wales’, continues Clover in his eulogistic dis, and it’s an appropriate précis of a puerile genius and mutant telepathy that to witness is one-part stand-up and the rest, pretty life-threatening.
Grunge Genesis is smuggled chandelier jungle scumprog and fair trade nootropic chug spazz. Here, they’re joined by aforementioned Dead C / Handful of Dust / Xpressway / Hermescorp arch-sorcerer, Bruce Russell to evoke the absent presences of the Thai DVD Plaza, Willem Defoe and Hoyts 6. Clear and fun.
