Golden Animals Revisited

A far cry from Vixens, these guys were sunglasses-wearing, long-haired and bearded drone/sludge rockers highly reminiscent of Pontiak among others. Very loud and thunderous, they caused a very strange sensation at times – the singer’s voice seemed occasionally to cause your brain to throb when he held a note, one of those feelings which uneasily straddles pleasure and horror.

Andy Johnson
http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2009/09/golden-animals-jericho-tavern-oxford-190809/


A short review of our set the other week supporting Golden Animals. Click the link for a full review of the gig, including Vixens and Golden Animals sets.
Got a few more gigs lined up for the next couple of months, supporting the Notorious Hi-Fi Killers at the Celler on the 24th of September, and ILikeTrains at the Bullingdon in October.

Oxford Punt Reviews

We played the Oxford Punt earlier this month. Organised by Nightshift Magazine the Punt is a mini festival held across many venues in one evening in Oxford.

Here are some snippets of reviews from that night.

"Sprial 25 turn The Cellar into a dark womb of numb bliss and stoned
paranoia with their molasses-thick drone rock. It’s a claustrophobic
experience, an expertly controlled swirling fug of heavy grooves and
sweeping vocals, with definite narcotic nods to the likes of Spiritualized,
Loop and The Jesus and Mary Chain."

Oxford Bands, May 23rd 2009

"Adding bricks to this wall-of-distortion, Spiral 25 were also well received. Similar to the psychedelia of The Black Angels, they flooded the room in a dense fog, put on black sunglasses and drew forth waves of mystic, textured Rock."

Brendan Morgan
Bearded Magazine, May 24th 2009

Spiral 25 E. P. Review

"SPIRAL 25
‘Spiral 25 EP’
(Own Label)
Rock and roll’s dark side of the street – the side where the pimps and smack dealers and rakish leather-clad waifs exist in eternal shadow – has always held a more seedily romantic lure than the sunny side. From The Velvet Underground’s speed’n’smack rock experimentalism through The Stooges, Spacemen 3 and Warlocks, the needle traces a blackened line that can veer off at strange, exotic tangents or spiral forever inwards. Here’s where you’ll find Spiral 25, the band, lest we forget, formed by assorted members of The Factory, arguably one of Oxford’s great lost bands, certainly of recent years. Reconvened after a brief time under the moniker Dirty Sci-Fi, guitarist Chris Monger, bassist Joe Chapman and drummer Andy Proper have recruited guitarist Sunny Singh and vocalist Russell Denham, a singer in the spaced-out and devotional mode of Jim Morrison, and set out to dig their musical furrow deep and claustrophobic. They wear their influences not so much on their sleeves as stamped on their foreheads but confidently and with singleminded unselfconsciousness, and as they lay down a groove as black as a fallen angel’s armpit, guitars providing a shifting pattern of textures over the relentless rhythm, you’re lost in a flotation tank full of tar and treacle, the hymnal ‘Let The Light Shine On’ spiralling through Loop’s heavy-duty psychedelia with grim, morbid determination, while ‘Signals’ bubbles spaceward from its subterranean beginnings, a kindred spirit to Spacemen 3’s ‘Things Will Never Be The Same’.
As the mood darkens through the EP, Spiral 25 really hit bedrock with ‘Today’s Future
(Tomorrow’s Past)’, exhuming those old blues via The Doors’ ‘The End’ and a ceaseless narcotic grind that’s so thick with soot you feel you need to scrub out your lungs by the time it finishes. It may be a musical cliché but this is one CD you really must play at excruciating volume to do it full justice. Thankfully, if the neighbours do call the police, you’ll be so whacked out on the pretty fractal patterns in your head you won’t even mind when they cart you off."

Dale Kattack
Nightshift, Oxford's Music Magazine. March 2009.