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“IBIZA ENTERTAINMENT FROM HELL”- 3voor12draait

Taken from the Edwin Brienen directed video for Last Night's Party - click here for full video

BIOGRAPHY
Ravage! Ravage!, “grandson of Marc Almond and Pet Shop Boys” (according to Dutch online multi-media magazine 3voor12), is the perverted brainchild of a fairly shy Dutch boy, who eats Glass Candy, dresses in fluorescent black and transforms into Ravage! Ravage! whenever his music is played - be it in the studio or on stage.

The boy behind the dayglo eye-shadow had been living an ordinary (and overly geeky and, sad but oh so true, rather lonely) boy's life before he decided to leave his secret bedsit studio - back then located in a silent and comfortably generic Dutch Suburbia, light years away from any excitement and extravaganza whatsoever - and seek a life filled with stroboscobe lights, scantily dressed youngsters and, especially, songs with passion, urgency and grotesque überpophooks.

He decided he should ditch his glasses in Clark Kent-fashion, and start a new life, as Ravage! Ravage!, singing about his own desire to join hip and happening rock 'n' rave bands (“Join up for the New Young Pony Club” - OK, they were hip 'n' happening, like, two years ago, but that's not the point), about boys losing their girlfriends to other girls (“Velvet grrl”), about dubious men lusting for under age rent boys (“Oh my beau gigolo”), about his own faltering groupie fantasies (“Missin Miss Kittin”) and about creepy macho drug dealers (“BMBRJXXX”), just to give you some random examples.

Initially, he took his “stompers from a postnucleair Ibiza” (3voor12) on the road all by himself and his beloved MP3 player, with which he made his solo live debut in London (Computer Blue at Bar Music Hall, Shoreditch) of all places - and followed it up with several performances in the Netherlands (amongst them, one for Dutch music TV channel TMF) and ended up in Berlin (White Trash, with Ed Banger Vicarious Bliss) as well.

On his journey, he found many like-minded souls, and two of them decided to jump on the bandwagon earlier this year and make Ravage! Ravage! an actual band.

Now a band, Ravage! Ravage! features De Zwart on bass and guitar and on drums and drumpads the wonderfully delicious Léonie La Blanche, plus (occasionally) VJ's Viaduktape providing fittingly strobing and sometimes slightly-oh-only-slightly seedy visuals, with whom they have by now played at (for instance) the Amsterdam Fashion Week (Westergasfabriek), a MySpace Presents (Paard van Troje), with Viva la Fête at Patronaat and Effenaar, and did a Dark Underground Tour, playing dates at a.o. Tivoli, Manifesto, Metropool, Effenaar and Simplon.

Meanwhile, they also organize their own (so far always sold out) Neon Punx nights, and do DJ sets (often with partner in fashion crime Le Source) - this year they shared turn tables with, for instance, Crookers, Joost van Bellen, MOTOR, Rogerseventytwo, Brodinski, Dada Life, Shitdisco, Kid Rêve, Blokgolf and Homework, in seedy nightclubs such as the Flexbar and Paard van Troje.

Since Ravage! Ravage! is hard to pin down to a scene or style - too dark for new rave, too poppy for industrial, too dancey for rock, too rockey for, you guessed it, dance - they prefer to refer to their style as rave-noir.

Keep an eager eye on (t)his MySpace and on ravageravage.com for new music, new news and to find out where to get yr Ravage! Ravage! live show fix.

Now, let's draw this already slightly overlong bio to a fitting conclusion by citing a few lines from an as of yet unreleased Ravage! Ravage! potential-classic: “Let's see a band and rock & roll/Then dance to Jus†ice and “She's lost control”/To Patrick Wolf and to The Knife/And all the songs that continue to save our lives/Night after night after night
We have no notion of what's hip or fit/Well, perhaps we do but we care shit/Call it postmodern - we prefer to call it fun/Let's just be pretentious and prepare to stun” - amen to that.

- The biographer of Ravage! Ravage!


CONTACT
Sign up for the mailinglist at www.ravageravage.com
or by sending an e-mail to mailing[at]ravageravage.com
To book Ravage! Ravage! send a MySpace message
or mail to inquiries[at]ravageravage.com
Get in contact with De Zwart at ravageravage.hyves.nl
Ravage! Ravage! RMXD = myspace.com/rvgrvgrmxd
Leave a comment at the Ravage! Ravage! last.fm page
And, finally - join Ravage! Ravage! on Facebook





QUOTES, QUOTES, QUOTES
“Holland's new rave reverend” - TimeOut London
“Debauched rave-noir” - Amsterdam Weekly
“Super-electro Dutch ravers” - Trash Menagerie
“spetterend optreden” - OOR.nl
“Muzikale leider van de new rave scene in Amsterdam” - Het Parool
“Great music!” - DJ Hell
“Klinkt goed!” - Joost van Bellen
“You ROCK!” - Vive la Fête's Danny after a performance
“Ook over de Britse landsgrenzen slaat New Rave aan (...) zo heeft Nederland Aux Raus en Ravage! Ravage! (...)” - OOR mag
“A Dutch treat” - Ex Berliner mag
“Ravage! Ravage!: Dark, exciting, arty, dance, rave, electro, Justice, Placeo, Bowie, My Bloody Valentine” - 3voor12
“Soms kom je een band tegen waarvan je niet gelooft dat het uit Nederland komt” - TMF
“Sophisticated like Pet Shop Boys with a storm
of Soft Cell's nastiness” - NoddY RioT





LONDON FASHION WEEK VID
A bunch of Ravage! Ravage! songs have been used as soundtrack to a feature on the SuperSuper show during the London Fashion Week, as you can witness with yr own precious ears 'n' eyes herre:


...in order of appearance, you can see hipsters move to Join up for the New Young Pony Club, I want you to want me, Screw you and Karma backfires.


EXHIBITED
Exhibition at Rotterdam's Witte de With's Blaak10 existed of photo installation by Cédric Pradel of Ravage! Ravage! dressed in Niels Brinkman, and included exclusive, never-before-heard music by Ravage! Ravage!


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BITCHY PS.
We don't really like "Thx 4 the Add" comments. Please, only "request our friendship" if you really fancy the music - not to just add another number to your amount of MySpace friends.