John Maus
with DJ Motorboy
at The Croft
(Mon 26th Oct 2009 / 10pm / £2)
Qu Junktions is stoked to present a special late show for John Maus (Hawaii/Upset The Rhythm).
The songs of this Hawaii-based politics and philosophy lecturer have arrowed themselves, dark and true, into the collective subconscious of the outsider pop faithful. Like his peers Ariel Pink and R. Stevie Moore, Maus works by holding pop music's absurd and murky history up to the light...but whereas classic pop is concerned with escape, and much of its modern equivalent with a certain elusiveness, for Maus there is simply nowhere, nothing to hide. Hence there is something singularly naked and real about these freakishly addictive tracks, be they thunderous ballads for ruined stadia, singalong synth-pop B.A.N.G.E.R.S for autistic sweethearts, or just humble paeans of hope for brighter futures that may or may not come to pass.
He performs with an incredible, vein-popping intensity, entering into a kind of purgatorial mania with just his disembodied compositions and huge, shredding swathes of vocal delay for company, turning whichever barely appropriate spot he plays into a starkly-lit karaoke joint in the periphera of the known mind. Forget work, forget Tuesday, forget vogueish hipster modes and 'hypnagogic pop' ... tonight John Maus is your host, and the chalice is yours to clasp.
"John Maus is a maniac on a bloody crusade - a tortured evangelist on a mercenary quest to rid our world of villainous defilers of The Gospel of True Love. By turns shockingly infectious and disarmingly unpredictable, his music conflates a perplexing marriage of Moroder's 'Never Ending Story' and classical 12-tone renegades of 20th century past, harking the new path which resurrects romance from its post-modern shackles, and reignites the promise of a better world." - Ariel Pink
The songs of this Hawaii-based politics and philosophy lecturer have arrowed themselves, dark and true, into the collective subconscious of the outsider pop faithful. Like his peers Ariel Pink and R. Stevie Moore, Maus works by holding pop music's absurd and murky history up to the light...but whereas classic pop is concerned with escape, and much of its modern equivalent with a certain elusiveness, for Maus there is simply nowhere, nothing to hide. Hence there is something singularly naked and real about these freakishly addictive tracks, be they thunderous ballads for ruined stadia, singalong synth-pop B.A.N.G.E.R.S for autistic sweethearts, or just humble paeans of hope for brighter futures that may or may not come to pass.
He performs with an incredible, vein-popping intensity, entering into a kind of purgatorial mania with just his disembodied compositions and huge, shredding swathes of vocal delay for company, turning whichever barely appropriate spot he plays into a starkly-lit karaoke joint in the periphera of the known mind. Forget work, forget Tuesday, forget vogueish hipster modes and 'hypnagogic pop' ... tonight John Maus is your host, and the chalice is yours to clasp.
"John Maus is a maniac on a bloody crusade - a tortured evangelist on a mercenary quest to rid our world of villainous defilers of The Gospel of True Love. By turns shockingly infectious and disarmingly unpredictable, his music conflates a perplexing marriage of Moroder's 'Never Ending Story' and classical 12-tone renegades of 20th century past, harking the new path which resurrects romance from its post-modern shackles, and reignites the promise of a better world." - Ariel Pink