Consummately outstrips its influences, giddy melocicism
author: Alex Ogg - Live Club
Brand Violet – Voodoo CD EP
And your excuse for not knowing how great this band are is…. what? More of the same is a treat in this context. Pumping, rump-shaking pop music like they used to make. Consummately outstrips its influences, its giddy melodicism would make Van Morrison smile. You even get a free video of ‘Alien Hive Theme’. No doubt about to leave our modest orbit. It has been an honour to know you.
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his time around they’ve taken their standard future-surf pop template on a strol
author: Cliff Roberts - LOGO
Brand Violet are appearing in these pages with such regularity you might think that we were on their payroll. In fact it’s just because they engaged in a blizzard of releases; if you miss one there’ll surely be another along in a minute. They are all to be welcomed as well, there’s not a duff release in this bag. This time around they’ve taken their standard future-surf pop template on a stroll down the avenue where the freaks hang out; this time around you’ll see Altered Images pilfering Space’s finest moments (they did have one or two) while Voivod look on approvingly. It’s Sally-Anne Marsh’s catsuit that does it.
Cliff Roberts
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slow-burning energy, power and pure sexual tension
author: Juan dos Passos - Bewteen Planets
Brand Violet - Voodoo
Brand Violet have been kicking around the London indie scene for several years now, leaving some of us wondering how it is possible for this band to have remained such a well-kept secret for so long.
It seems that the word is starting to spread, and the release of the Voodoo single ahead of the band's debut album Retrovision Coma USA confirm that this is a band to watch.
Having seen them live, it's hard to imagine how anyone could capture the slow-burning energy, power and pure sexual tension of vocalist Sally-Anne Marsh and the band's impossibly self-contained atom-bomb-in-a-biscuit-tin sound. Voodoo, like Alien Hive Theme before it, comes close.
Making comparisons is a poor and lazy journalist's way out of doing any work, but I'd file Brand Violet somewhere amongst Man Or Astro Man, Blondie, The Pixies and possibly the Cardigans at their naughtiest and most interesting. Suffice it to say Voodoo would fill the floors of clubs and BDSM clubs alike, with both audiences equally confused and equally enthralled.
LOGO Magazine seems intent on tipping Brand Violet for future success and a bright light in the vanilla-flavoured UK musical soundscape of 2004, and I'm pleased to join them.
Brand Violet / Voodoo's appeal, and brilliance, lies in the easy reference points that make the band accessible -- great for lazy journalists -- contrasted against a sound, when those reference points are melted together, that is simply unmistakable.
Do Voodoo!
-- JdP
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