Twisted Charm

Some might have you believe, in 2006, that you don’t have a voice in an English music scene as chained to the kitchen sink as it has been in years unless you’re gruffly reveling in the mundane trials and pitiful pleasures of the daily grind. Not so Twisted Charm. Hailing from Northamptonshire, a county full of towns to small to reach that critical mass where life will be created, but big enough for a Woolworths and a vicious be-shirted bastard on every corner, Twisted Charm use sax, new wave dance inflections and a fraught insistence to expunge the frustrations that seethe within provincial life, and create their own dark reality. Theirs is a story not of eking out a living and dreaming dreams that’ll never be realized, nor of a smooth ride through life with their music as a convenient hobby, but instead a tale of trying to make sense of bizarre histories and peculiar struggles through music that is almost its own bastard son. Drummer Dominic Cole now spends his days clearing up the messes mental and otherwise in an insane asylum, where he says he finds it hard to distinguish between the inmates and those who inhabit what’s supposed to be reality. He grew up with brother Nathan Doom, whose snide, cutting vocals reveal a boy whose effeminate looks forced him to become hard as nails. However, Nathan’s black belt in Korean karate couldn't spare him when an altercation with more of Southend's natives than he could handle left him with two weeks of concussion. His skills in the martial arts match his eye for critiquing both the peculiar and banal sides of life from he crafts Twisted Charm’s edgy pop. This comes in part from a life-long obsession with cinema, the tension of the relationship between Klaus Kinski and Werner Herzog depicted in 'My Best Fiend', or the cinematography of Andrei Tarkovski. The fraternal duo hooked up with bassist Dave Dave, a boy brought up aware he’d always be one of societies outsiders with gypsy descendents and a family with a history of mental illness. And so the bitter seeds of what was to become Twisted Charm gradually took root in Northamptonshire’s infertile earth. The trio soon decided to turn their backs on such gray nothingness and headed to the big city, where they met Luke Georgiou, the saxophonist who claims to have suffered a childhood in the realms of the land of the nod, not only being dropped on his head as an infant, but fed a diet of sleeping pills that to this day have led to a penchant for spontaneous comas. Twisted Charm then embarked on the usual round of the toilet venues, wherein they trounced many of East London’s then leading lights by dint of a superior imagination and ear for fine wrongness in song. Now with a home on French label Because Music, Twisted Charm have been busy recording their debut album at Foel studios in Wales with Lance Thomas (Ladytron / Simian / PJ Harvey). They insist we can expect this some time early in 2007 on Because Music, but until then we’ll be sated with their forthcoming single on Alt