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BOBBIE PERU PRESS RELEASE & REVIEWS

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Bobbie Peru - Kill the Autopilot

Review by www.ctindie.com

CT-native Bert Genovese started Bobbie Peru in Manchester, UK around 2006 when he moved away from here to pursue a career in music. It looks like he was onto something, because a few years later, they have a huge following and have opened for bands like The Fall and Black Francis.

Kill the Autopilot was released in Oct. of 2009. The album is their second, and it's a non-stop insane thrash fest of prog-punk. The music is wild and experimental, and although the band is super tight, it all sounds as raw as a fresh wound. Just looking at the album cover, you can kind of imagine how seriously they take themselves, but I'm completely ok with that. I'm a sucker for immature humor and funny lyrics; and they do not disappoint. I mean, the title track has a chorus that goes: "flush me I'm shit!" You can't get much cooler than that. If you're looking for a smarter brand of punk, check these guys out.

It's hard not to draw a comparison to another CT band: Kimono Draggin'. I think these two are very similar in a lot of respects, whether is be insane lyrics, powerful punk rage or wild shredding guitar work; you can draw a lot of similarities. Interestingly enough, that's exactly who they're playing a few shows with in April, so if you dig either band, these aren't shows to miss.

Bobbie Peru will be jumping the pond and doing a short East Coast tour this April:

Double whammy on Apr 10:
Brass City Records (w/ Kimono Draggin’), Waterbury, CT - 2:00P
and then at
Cafe 9 (w/ Kimono Draggin’), New Haven, CT - 9:00P

Apr 23 - Snapper Magee’s (w/ Hudson Falcons), Torrington, CT - 8:00P

Apr 24 - Snapper Magee’s (w/ Hudson Falcons), Kingston, NY - 8:00P

albumcover.jpg

 

OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE:
DATE: 17th October 2007 - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

BOBBIE PERU - DEBUT ALBUM
'SOCIAL SUICIDE'

OUT NOW!


http://www.myspace.com/bobbieperu


"Come on outside, I got somethin' to show ya..."

BOBBIE PERU have just released their stunning debut album, 'SOCIAL SUICIDE'.

They are no longer one of Manchester's best kept secrets, BOBBIE PERU create a buzz every time they play live, collecting admirers along the way.

"Brilliant band! Reminds me of the golden years of new wave and punk music" was the response from DJ CLINT BOON during their XFM Radio Live In Session last month.

Described by Sentimentalist Magazine of New York as "Hands down Manchester-bred Bobbie Peru are the best nu-gaze band in a while."


BOBBIE PERU: Lead Vocals/Guitar BERT GENOVESE, Bass DING: (The Fall, PJ Harvey, Frank Black) and Drums DOCTOR E.


'SOCIAL SUICIDE' contains thirteen blistering tracks that lodge between your conscience and your misguided inclinations. Forget everything you thought you knew - expect the unexpected with...

Swan Souffle / Luke Wake Up / Broken Bones / Lost Make Up / Sleep War / Bricks / Carbon Dated / Bon Bon Rue / 1971 / BF Skinner / Burning In Hindsight / Lucky 16 / Narcissus.

'SOCIAL SUICIDE' results in an awesome debut album that is as underground sounding as it is commercially viable.

"A warm cup of tea with a hint of arsenic" is how the band describe their own sound.

Released as a limited edition black vinyl effect CD and including a stunning 16-page full colour booklet complete with lyrics.

'SOCIAL SUICIDE' is available now online at
https://bobbieperu.tripod.com/id11.html



ABOUT THE SONGS:

First on the menu is the mouth-watering 'SWAN SOUFFLE' served up with incisive humour and an infested punk attitude, followed by the blistering 'LUKE WAKE UP' an alarming wake up call to the six-sided man.

Doctor E. takes care of the 'BROKEN BONES' whilst penetrating your eardrums and vibrating your malleus bone with a precision that only a fully qualified medical drummer could. Ding's thumping bass and Bert's metallic shock riffs continue the treatment. Diagnosis: 'Don't eat chicken!'

'LOST MAKE UP' takes a snarling snapshot of family life, acquaintances and misplaced others who reside near Teen Bores Grove.

The dire social commentary of 'SLEEP WAR' pushes and pulls you back and forth before falling on you like a ton of 'BRICKS'.

The haunting, melodic serenade of the beautifully crafted 'CARBON DATED' will see you slowly drowning in a sea of melancholy, ending with a last gasp scramble of raw hopelessness and frustration. Bobbie Peru don't come up for air.

The raw roar of 'BON BON RUE' based on the Communist lexicon bounces along before lulling you into a false sense of security. An edible piece of bittersweet rock candy.

The blistering '1971' is a history lesson complete with a riff that sounds like an indie guitarist being guillotined has already sold out online. This first released single complete with promo video brilliantly created by Seven/Seven Productions has already been viewed thousands of times online. You can watch the video at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iEMOKsFIRg

'BF SKINNER' takes the experimental analysis of behaviourism and serves it up all verbally raw and radical.

Intimate and desperate 'BURNING IN HINDSIGHT' is lovingly sprinkled with just a hint of irony. Eat some cake and then lose your head on 'LUCKY 16'.

'NARCISSUS' blends hazy Sixties Syd psychedelia with Seventies space glam and adding a dash of callous Gothic subculture to taste.


'SOCIAL SUICIDE' (Cat. No. 63447962046) is available now at
https://bobbieperu.tripod.com/id11.html or at the following record stores: Piccadilly Records (Manchester, UK), Vinyl Exchange (Manchester, UK), Jumbo (Leeds, UK) and Phoenix Records (Waterbury, CT, USA).



ABOUT THE BAND:

BOBBIE PERU were formed January 2006 in Manchester. The lead singer relocated to the UK from the States to pursue a musical career. Progressing from his earlier solo acoustic soundscapes, BERT GENOVESE (Lead Vocal/Guitar) gathered a collection of local musical talents... DING (PJ Harvey/The Fall/Frank Black) - bass guitar and DAVIS EVASON - drums to form BOBBIE PERU, and began to blow minds.

They cook up a particularly demented stew with their ever-changing musical palette, which is an unpredictable mix of stabbing guitars, social commentary and a rhythm section coming through like a freight train.

The result: some of the most dynamic, catchy and distinctive compositions which will infiltrate your mind and encompass your soul.

Live they are a witches brew of destabilized rock and roll, randomness, style and raw energy, that will leave you breathless and begging for more. Their debut album 'SOCIAL SUICIDE' is a multi-dimensional experience of the power of positive noise, which is not to be missed.


"Commit to SOCIAL SUICIDE - it may just save your life."




QUOTABLE QUOTES:

"Brilliant band!" - Clint Boon (XFM Radio DJ) (Inspiral Carpets).
"Better than the fucking Prodigy." - Mark E. Smith (The Fall).
"St John Peel would've loved them." - Virgin Digital.
"Feels like a secret you're lucky enough to hear." - BBC Manchester Entertainment.
"Bobbie Peru deliver on every level." - Leeds Music Scene.
"With a name like that, you've got to check them out." - Sandman Magazine.
"Cocaine meditation for the masses" - Jim Jonnie.
"Easily the best collection of songs I've heard on one album this year." - BowieWonderworld.com
"Hands down Bobbie Peru are the best nu-gaze band in a while." - Sentimentalist Magazine (New York).
"Reminds me of the golden years of new wave and punk music." - Clint Boon XFM Radio Live In Session.


If you would like to receive a review copy of the album please email
bobbieperu666@yahoo.com or visit http://www.myspace.com/bobbieperu


Check out
http://www.myspace.com/bobbieperu where you can hear two exclusive brand new songs recorded in the studio last week - 'Friends In The Bank' and their cover of Devo's 'Whip It'.


MySpace:
http://www.myspace.com/bobbieperu
Website: http://bobbieperu.tripod.com
Email: bobbieperu666@yahoo.com


© 2007: Rednik

Peru save us from indie-lite

By David Sue
14/ 8/2008


AS we all learned from Heath Ledger's mesmerising interpretation of The Joker in The Dark Knight movie, madness can sometimes be a very, very infectious thing.

Indeed, when placed in the right hands, ideas of the absurd, the unhinged, the freakishly anarchic, can all be very, well, exciting and enticing things - despite our best resistance.

It's a madcap philosophy which Manchester band Bobbie Peru are clearly keen to transpose to the world of Manc music.

The punk trio, who describe themselves on their MySpace page as being like, 'a warm mug of tea laced with arsenic', might just be the band to turn the good citizens of Manchester a bit crazy. Here is a band who are less mad for it - more plain and simple MAD.

"As a band, we aim to unsettle," murmurs Bobbie Peru bassist Simon 'Ding' Archer, who, at over six foot tall and sporting a punk-rock Mohican hairstyle, manages to unsettle with physical presence alone.

He continues: "The music we make is the sort of music I can imagine soundtracking someone being committed to a mental asylum. It's uncomfortable music - the soundtrack to madness!

"I love The Joker in the new Batman film - the whole idea of distorting people's perceptions of what's right and what's wrong. That's what this band are all about."

Since forming two years ago, Bobbie Peru - named after a character from a David Lynch film - have done a fine job of unhinging the otherwise sane minds of Manchester music devotees.

Rationality

Theirs is a world where reality and rationality are tiny obstacles to a far more enticing world of surrealism and the freakishly macabre.

The band's live shows find singer Bert Genovese dressed in a Guantanamo Bay-style boiler suit screaming into the faces of audience members; their artwork and imagery is influenced by the surrealist painter Salvador Dali; and the band's biggest celebrity fan is none other than The Fall's Mark E Smith, a man who definitely knows bonkers music when he hears it.

Creating an unsettling post-punk noise which brings to mind a bloody motorway pile-up between Fugazi, Sonic Youth and The Fall (but louder and more violent than all three), this is a band who wilfully walk the line between madness and off-beam genius.

You never know which one you're going to get with Bobbie Peru, but that's all part of their ghoulish charms. The we way we see it," explains Ding, "is that you're never going to hear our music on Radio 1, next to a song by The Kooks.

"We just don't make that kind of cosy, comfortable indie music which is so in fashion now.

"There's so much indie-lite music which is there to soundtrack shopping for jeans in the Arndale.

"I hate that sort of comfortable indie music, which is essentially like wallpaper.

"Bobbie Peru make music which is uncomfortable - it's there to challenge your senses and sanity. It's not pretty, delicate music. It's more the sound of a car crash."

Lyrcist

Bobbie Peru's heart of madness is their frontman, lyricist and main spokesman Bert Genovese.

A former art student who's fond of citing non-music influences like Kurt Vonnegut, James Joyce and David Lynch, he's a man determined to make the world come round to his rather askew, eccentric way of thinking.

Geography plays a big part in this - Bert was born and brought up in Atlanta, Georgia, in the States, and he moved to Manchester six years ago to pursue a music career (his first band Adom made minor ripples on the Manc music scene, CityLife readers may remember).

But since forming Bobbie Peru with like-minded misfits David Evason (on drums) and Ding (who played bass in PJ Harvey's backing band for two years), Bert began to pen more observational songs; songs which were part social realism, part questioning the functions of society as we know them.

"As an American living in England, I write things from a different cultural perspective," Bert explains.

"I'm fascinated by how English society works. There are so many bands writing this very rose-tinted view of the country, and romanticising what they see.

"I don't see the point - this is a time to portray a more brutal, truthful view of the country.

Youth violence

"From knife culture, to youth violence and all these gangs hanging around on the streets at night.

"There's a lot of things to question."

With such a brutalising outlook, it's unlikely Bobbie Peru were ever going to share a fanbase with the likes of Alphabeat. But in the two years since they've been gigging, Bobbie Peru have built up a strong and very loyal army of misfits and followers.

Their infamous live shows are textbook lessons in punkish iconoclasm where anything can fall apart at any second (a recent gig saw Bert run into the audience and launch a bottle of wine across the room); while their debut album Social Suicide (released on New York-based indie label Dig Nitty Records) should bring joy to any fans of funereal post-punk gloom who have felt short-changed by conveyor belt miserablists like Editors or Interpol.

But then again, it's probably not joy which Bobbie Peru want to elicit from audiences - more unruly madness. In the words of The Joker, let the craziness begin.

"The whole point of this band is to provoke a reaction," insists Ding. "For me, there's nothing worse than me looking out into the audience and seeing people with their arms crossed looking indifferent and apathetic.

"I want people to have an extreme reaction to us - extreme disgust or extreme love.

"We're here to polarise. And if people think we're a bit insane then we're doing our job."

Album Review from NYC based Sentamentalist Magazine September 2007

Unabashedly sounds like "A warm cup of tea with a hint of arsenic" on their MySpace page. Hands down, Manchester-bred Bobbie Peru is the best nu-gaze band in a while, fraught with fresh skank and leaden with time-bomb rhythms. Snippets of dire social commentary of "Sleepwar" is Rancid-related, but plenty of elements separate Bobbie Peru from the punk wrangling shoegaze masses. Notable is the firecracker drumming in "Broken Bones" and cheeky humor, based on Communist lexicon in "Bon Bon Rue", is barely-caring bouncy. "BF Skinner" makes damn sure listeners know Bobbie Peru can get raw and nitty-gritty without going for overwrought. Unreleased song "New Swan Souffle", solely judged by the title, is a prime example of incisive humor. However jaded it may be, one cannot deny Bobbie Peru of complete, utter steamrolling.--Karen Fu    http://www.myspace.com/sentimentalist

Bobbie Peru Album Review - Mike CK

Bobbie Peru – album

As the CD gets up to spinspeed I am intuitively expecting great things. I immediately want to see them live – the recording captures enough to let me know they are for real. St John Peel would've loved them. That's good enuff4me. Rip it – onto the player – hit the road. I will fight. Bloc Party in there somewhere – the voice, the synths, the phaser. Better than Bloc party tho. Guitar like Delta Five. Shit, they're unsigned! What are these stoopid labels doin of? Guys, you're bloody brilliant. Believe U Me. Believe. Oh, psychedelic+garage – like XTC, or an English Seeds. Whatever, I've got it, u ain't. LOL!

Can u imagine working for a record label that releases crap like girls aloud? It's especially weird when juxtaposed against Bobbie Peru and other class acts. U begin to realise that all lemons are yellow but not all yellows and lemon. Different. They both pop, they not both good. No, wrong. Not both same, different. No, that's just liberal me. Go to a bad restaurant and tip heavy – tell em they are good, keep it up. They go out og business quick. I missed it again. Oh no, GA are sexy. Kit off! So, if it's hormones that need ticklin… How dya make a hormone? Refuse to pay. Hee hee hee. Bless.

1st prize goes to Bobbie Peru

MIKE CK http://mikeckstonedimmaculate.blogspot.com/

The final band I want to mention in this update is Bobbie Peru, who I saw live for a work event, and have been liking their music ever since. They sent me a link to the gig I went to, and whilst it's not the best quality, you'll get the idea - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWvPZ4--sSY

I like their style; it's a good combination of rock and punk-rock, that harks to bands like Shellac, Mclusky and Sonic Youth, in differing measures. I urge you to check them out, I hope they get a record deal soon.
 
 
 
Review of The Mixing Tin Gig in Leeds,
November 2006
What can be said about the third band on the line up this evening, Bobbie Peru?

Lead singer Bert, adorns the stage with his red boiler suit, looking like he has just escaped from Guantanamo Bay, and displays a vocal energy rather like someone who has been locked up for a very long time.

I have wanted to see these guys for a while, and even though I am usually disappointed with bands I've had a live yearning for, Bobbie Peru deliver on every level.

These guys know how to work a stage and explode. They are punky and dark one minute, rock and blues the next. The vocals are sometimes scary but carefully poised and take you to an imaginary edge, where you can feel lead singer Bert stood behind you wanting to cheekily prod you over with his finger.

They are such an invigorating injection to a music scene laden with emo pop and Green Day wannabes, and they are all quite clearly as mad as badgers in a captivating way. Each of their personalities emanate through their performance and it works well, with Winger on guitar, innovatively crashing and bashing through tunes such as '1971' then switching to show a more hazy gentler style on tunes such as 'Narcissus' Bert has exceptional vocal ability and can attack any lyric with confidence and venom but also shows an enveloping sweeter sound with his voice on the above tune to match the guitar workings.

The bass player, Ding is amazingly experienced and sets them far apart with a maturity that is evident in every strike of his fingers. Coupled with some pretty sweet driving beats from Dr. E, as shown in 'Burning In Hindsight' and 'BF Skinner.'

I'm officially a convert to Bobbie Peru, and if you're looking for something new and stimulating I think you'll like them too.

If you are interested in reviewing Bobbie Peru music or a live performance email at bobbieperu666@yahoo.com