Mirror | rorriM

THE URBAN VOODOO MACHINE

The stars were aligning in the skies the night Paul-Ronney Angel was begged by a promoter to be the filling in a triple bill sandwich. Never one to turn down a knees-up, P-R realised he had 48 hours to put a band together. No problem. Trawling the dives and doss houses of London, he called in some favours, cracked some whips, and so it was that the Urban Voodoo Machine was cranked into life.

That was April 2003. Ever since then, this shadowy collective of ne’er-do-wells has been bringing the spirit of the carny to London, sleazing around the nefarious haunts of Lady Luck, Death Disco, Boom Boom Saloon and Bring Your Own Poison, and hosting the now legendary parties attended by Chinese Elvis impersonators, strippers, fire jugglers and drunk girls with equal vim and vigour.

With their lurching sea shanties, debauched murder ballads and whiskey-soaked gypsy stomps, some reckon they’re from the same stable of stallions as Tom Waits and Nick Cave; others point out the ‘last gang in town’ swagger of The Clash and the hellhound blues that JL Hooker first dragged out of the swamp. But while all other contenders belong in a drawer marked ‘knitwear’, The UVM is something rather more daring.

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