“There is an unholy racket floating up from the bowels of the earth underneath The Chippendale. It sounds like a bad smell, like something’s died in a gym sock, wafting up from the underground into the Friday night party in the beer garden. This turns out to be Party Dozen’s soundcheck (and not the zombie undead breaking free from their terrible subterranean prison as I had feared) and they are my new favourite band. This is based on the simple fact that anyone who can ferment a mess of noise like this is worthy of respect, fear, and (probably) quite a lot of expensive therapy. It is inventive and clever, and oddly beautiful – while also at times truly, wonderfully, biblically horrible. Party Dozen are a two-piece made up of just a saxophonist and a drummer, which sounds like the very worst idea in all the world – except the drummer is accomplished scene noisenik Jonathan Boulet, and the saxophonist is running her instruments through more guitar pedals than My Bloody Valentine (and aims to make the same sort of noise). This is music for people who want to hear music in all its forms, not those who came to have a sing-song. There is some mind-blowing and technical playing, there is some horrendous racket, there are bits when your feet want to dance, but your brain wants to escape out the side of your head. In a world made up of the neatly-pressed – and there are plenty of them up there in the beer garden – it’s a mischievous, impish delight to have someone like these two conducting savage and bloody raids on the surface-dwellers every now and again. What giddy and horrifying fun.”
