| Influences | Self destructing anarchosyndicalist bicycle flesh robots.
The group operates in an as yet undefined area between intuiative ritualised musical theatrical performance and shared collective improvising around musical and lyrical themes developed by all members of the group. There are various aims and objectives.
To function as an accepted method of therapy for members to express and explore ideas and behaviours in forms that would be unacceptable outside the realms of performance.
As a theoretical machinery that allows the musicians and audience to interrogate their own ideas of the boundaries and interrelations between sound, music, tone, vibration, movement, theatre, performance, spectacle, art, and catharsis.
As an ongoing process of instrument building, adaptation and reclaimation from that which is not specifically an instrument but with which sound can be made. This use of scrap, discarded and recycled objects rebuilt as instruments locates power with the players and for anyone who wants to imagine and construct their own instruments. |
| Sounds Like | “a Faust-like mixture of ritualised musical theatre and collective improvisation.. a scrapyard gamelan conjuring a post-industrial- even apocalyptic North of England… stumbling rhythms that echo some of the trash-kitsch of Swordfishtrombone-era Tom Waits.”
The Wire
“Nine doors is an album that offers an insight into the bizarre, the nature of happiness, the profane, insanity and the downright weird all with a strange beauty and a sense of humour.”
www.blankmediacollective.org
“Their music reminds me of The Brave Little Toaster, but older and angrier and probably drunk. Whiling away his older years at the scrap yard. The reason for this is… LBO are no ordinary band. As you can guess from the title, they use bikes to make music with, amongst other ordinary household items. Their recently released album Nine Doors, is like Jazz on Prozac, played in an abandoned factory using instruments in the way that Blue Peter used fairy liquid bottles. On both occasions the result is unexpected, strangely enjoyable and definitely imaginative. It’s not the kind of thing you can play in the background and ignore whilst reading the latest Marian Keyes, but it will get you thinking about the nature of happiness, society, insanity and Marlon Brando. And for those who don’t give a shit about all that – you can enjoy it for the weirdness.”
www.futurelegendmusic.wordpress.com
"The levenshulme bike orchestra are avant-garde. Their instruments, as their name suggests, are built in the most part from bicycles. There is a bass guitar, but it is also played with a bike fork, or occasionaly a pine cone.
None of this is what makes them avant-garde though. What makes them avant-garde are the vocals. They could be favourably compared to shemanic incantations, and unfavourably compared to screaming random sounds into a microphone. Both descriptions are accurate.
The levenshulme bike orchestra sound like Brian Eno, Boom Bip & Doseone falling down a liftshaft.
deadmanjones (on flickr) |
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