Noise-rock super group lands at the Kilowatt with local heavyweights
SAN FRANCISCO -- Led by Australian noise-rock legend Stu Spasm, the Art Gray Noizz Quintet brings its caustic songs to the Kilowatt Saturday night with reunited SF favorites Kingdom First and local veterans Musk.
Guitarist Spasm (known to some by his birth name, Stuart Gray) had already played in such notable Australian punk groups as Exhibit A, Salamander Jim and Scientists offshoot the Beasts of Bourbon when he founded Sydney-based band Lubricated Goat in 1986. Taking cues from the Stooges and Nick Cave's pioneering crew the Birthday Party, Spasm and his collaborators would make an even more unhinged improvisational racket on Lubricated Goat's debut album Plays the Devi's Music the following year.
The band would feature a fluid line-up of players with future Mudhoney bassist Guy Maddison included among the musicians who recorded the band's follow-up effort Paddock of Love the following year. The band created a national controversy by appearing onstage in the nude to perform the album's lead single "In the Raw" on the Australian Broadcast Corporation show Blah Blah Blah. Despite that notorious performance (or perhaps because of it), the group would eventually get signed to like-minded U.S. noise-punk imprint Amphetamine Reptile, who reissued the band's earlier albums and recent EP Schadenfreude ahead of Lubricated Goat's first American tour in 1989.
The band released its third album Psychedelicatessen for the label in 1990, but Lubricated Goat would go on hiatus after Spasm was stabbed in Berlin during their first European tour. The musician would release a number of singles on various labels under the moniker during the early '90s, but also founded the group Crunt with then wife Kat Bjelland (of the band Babes in Toyland) and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion drummer Russell Simins. The trio would record a single album, but by the time it was released in 1994, both the group and Spasm's marriage to Bjelland had started disintegrate. Both would be over within the year.
Lubricated Goat would go silent until Spasm and a new version of the band released The Great Old Ones, a 2003 collection of re-recorded material from throughout the group's history, and resumed live performances. Spasm's latest all-star project the Art Gray Noizz Quintet formed in 2015 to celebrate the premiere of the Amphetamine Reptile documentary The Color of Noise. Featuring latter-era Lubricated Goat member Rich Hutchins (also former drummer of Live Skull, Of Cabbages and Kings and Ruin) along with ex-Woman bassist Ryan Skeleton Boy, Twin Guns guitarist Andrea Sicco and a variety of auxiliary members playing horns and metal percussion.
Since coming together, the outfit has supported kindred spirits like Mudhoney and the reunited Scientists as well as collaborating onstage with NYC no-wave heroine Lydia Lunch. Last year, the Quintet released its self-titled studio debut on Bang Records. The band's latest West Coast tour comes to the Kilowatt Saturday night with support from reunited late '90s SF favorites Kingdom First.
Though they only had a brief existence in the late '90s and early 2000s, the band featuring former Alice Donut guitarist Richard Marshall, singer Matthew Jervis (The Clarke Nova), guitarist Chris Carroll (Stimmies), bassist Dave Baldini (Swirl Happy) and drummer Christian Stark (Decal) established a reputation for hard-hitting live performances around San Francisco. The group recorded a single bracing album with noted producer/engineer Alex Newport before splitting up. After several members came together to perform punk classics by the Damned and the Saints at a memorial concert last year spurred the members to pursue a full-blown reunion. The group's blistering set for a Noise Pop tribute concert to photographer Peter Ellenby last February proved the quintet could still deliver onstage.
Openers Musk has been offering up their pungent mix of noise rock and bluesy punk injected with guitarist Chris Owen's corrosive six-string squall since first coming together in 2011. Inspired by Australian punk bands like the Scientists and feedtime -- Owen (ex-Killers Kiss) bonded with singer Rob Fletcher at a San Francisco reunion show by the latter band as both lamented the lack of real hostility in modern garage rock. Also nodding to the roots-focused sounds of the Chrome Cranks and the Cramps, the group was soon forging its uniquely malevolent sound.
The band's unhinged early demos featuring Fletcher's demented howling and Owens' hyper-distorted guitar abuse led to the debut Musk album coming out on Holy Mountain Records in 2014. A solid approximation of what the Jesus Lizard might have sounded like if iconic instrumental great Link Wray took over on guitar, the band's menacing self-titled effort produced by regular John Dwyer studio collaborator Chris Woodhouse earned a slew of rave reviews, as did their woolly, chaotic live performances at clubs on both coasts.
While it took some time for the band to get together a follow-up, in 2016 the even more caustic sequel entitled Musk 2: The Second Skumming finally surfaced on 12XU records. Introducing elements of downtown NYC jazz skronk reminiscent of John Zorn's Naked City, the band produced an even more baleful cacophony that balanced against woozy, Neil Young and Crazy Horse-style lament "Weathervane."
After a period of working in new members Warren Huegel (drums) and Jim Vail (of the band FNU Clones on bass), ramped up its activity with several shows including an appearance at the 2019 edition of the Burger Boogaloo in Oakland. That same year, Musk also issued its first new music in ages with the ferocious "Animal Husbandry" 7-inch single for Total Punk Records. However for this show, the group brings back original drummer Brendan Leonard to fill in for Huegel who was unavailable. It marks the first time he's played with the band since the band performed a special set at the SF Eagle several years ago with both drummers.
The Art Gray Noizz Quintet with Kingdom First and Musk
Saturday, Aug. 12, 8 p.m. $12-$15
The Kilowatt
