The Musicians

Christian Houllemare - Bass & Guitar on When  •  Peter Kelly - Drums & Trumpet  •  Mark Wilkinson - Guitar & Piano  •  Rob Younger - Vocals & Guitar On Asphalt. John Hoey - Electronic Keyboards  •  Sunil De Silva - Percussion

Band Bio: The New Christs - Not That You Asked

Successive incarnations of The New Christs have carried the vain-glorious mantle of self destruction. Imploding at crucial junctures, stalling at beckoning gates of opportunity, fucking up. But the New Christs are more a concept than any mere physical embodiment and simply won't let it go.

At inception a misaligned aggregation, drifters really, they recorded a single - Face A New God / Waiting World - that did nothing much but they didn't much care. They ceased to exist and for 3 years nothing. Fate then stepped in, in the shape of an almost fully formed band. Two 45's were rushed out to a public greedy for more. They didn't get it. When the time came to up the ante, get real in the studio and make sure it's good, something happened. Nothing.

A new improved line-up came, giving of themselves, laying waste many unprepared for, as one scribe enigmatically dubbed it, their "psycho-wave manifestations". A debut LP Distemper appeared and not withstanding a few mean-spirited gripes locally, garnered rave notices worldwide. On returning home from their second European foray, the air fouled with discontent, they did what they do better than practically anybody else. They did nothing and disappeared.

Months became years, and Rob, restless once again expressed his disgust to Christian Houllemare, a French expatriate hungry to satisfy desires he could barely conceal let alone articulate. The now perfunctory musical chairs continued but the nucleus of Christian and Rob stuck it out. Now there's a rockin' new line-up, with an arseload of new material, most of it songs and all of it captured magically on their latest offering.

Lower Yourself it's called. Why? Save your questions. Names mean nothing. Although this one does happen to mean something. Like as in "get down", get down with us, here, now, not tomorrow, not yesterday. History is detestable - this whole litany of under achievement bears witness to that - and should you not want to, well, you gives a rat's? And to promote this incendiary waxing? Europe awaits. A six week foray the length and breadth of a Continent held in breathless anticipation. Will the New Christs survive it? Will Europe survive the New Christs? Just get on that plane guys and let the Devil take the hindmost.

Look I've known the guys for ages, and although one or two of them are dead-set arseholes, their association while not bearing financial fruit has blossomed as one of mutual respect. A respect steeped in the scented vats of good times shared, under showers of creativity's crazy sparks and cloaked in a sober forbearance assumed by any and all who have dared to defy the odds beneath the unrelenting rain of the stultifying death-rays of a moribund cock-rock universe.

Surely this time around they can't fuck it up?