Corrupt press articles and interviews

The List 2nd April 1998 (Jonathan Trew)
Avalanche: "I'm on the side of the fucking angels', announces Philip Kane, frontman for London five piece Avalanche. Kane is sitting in one of the three bars in Camden he's not barred from. He is trying hard to stay off the bottle but it's not easy. His partner of ten years recently threw him out of the house. Chronic drunks can seem romantic. At first.

It's fair to say that life has not been entirely kind to Kane. He is 32 and looks considerably older. His face is like a saddle bag that's been dragged over ten miles of scrub. When he cackles with laughter, which he does often, his skin wrinkles up around his eyes until it looks like a contour map of a particularly steep mountain.

Kane is just about to release Hangover Square, Avalanche's debut album and the lyrical distillation of Kane's dissolution. Produced by Cathal Coughlan of the Fatima Mansions, it comes from the same musical pit of despair as some of Brel's grimmer moments or Leonard Cohen's introspective musings. It's the sound of self-hate, sordid self-degradation and regret. It's also rather good.

"What we do is poetic, angst driven and about doubt,'explains Kane. "It's not music as therapy, just a genuine desire to express things. You know that period between sixteen and twenty-one when you're racked with doubt? I've not outgrown it. People regard a successful live band as one which causes the audience to clap. We can silence them.

If all this sounds too self-pitying then fear not, for Kane has retained a healthy ability to laugh at the worst situations. "I don't find my songs bleak,' he explains while referring to an album that contains tracks about sexual exploitation and has sleeve artwork featuring a naked body in a hood being strung up. "It's just that they're packed with self-satire and parody.'

Tour August 1996 (Chrissi Williams)
Ennui are a 6 - 9 piece band complete with cello, flute and mandolin whose single "Two Sides of Sexual Cynicism', released on their own label, sounds like something a vampire might come up with on being thrown into eternal obscurity. So I was looking forward to meeting them, but instead only Philip Kane, lead singer and songwriter turned up. He explained to me that the other members of the band were Aussies, apart from the drummer who was German, and as of yet, were not quite interview friendly. "When they get together they do what Australians do - get drunk and talk really boisterous shit."

With a gulp of his Fosters and a drag on his cigarette, he explained why the number of people in the band varied between 6 - 9 members.

"I find the constraints of having a straight rock "n' roll band with no extraneous instruments tedious in the extreme. The current fashion for four-piece middle class white males getting up producing shoddy pop music irritates me and makes me bilious."

Modesty does not become Kane. In terms of live acts there isn't anybody in this fucking town to lace up our expensive shoes," he states.

Live, they capture elements of Iggy Pop and Nick Cave. So the Ennui world is a violent one. Kane confesses to being a vicious man. How vicious he wouldn't say, but after a laugh he volunteered: "Singer bites child."

I didn't believe him - or did I? Forget the name Ennui. This weird ensemble of people, with their inviting music should be called The Lost Boys....plus girl.

Totally Wired July 1996 (Andy Hawthorne)
Ennui's contribution to the second Rebellious Jukebox single carries the charming title, "The Boy whose Penis grew a Fingernail'. It is according to lead singer Philip Kane, "just your average Kafkaesque nightmare, boy wakes up, boy finds genitals have metamorphosed, boy slices off own dick song." Featuring harmonium, detuned "cello, a choir of drunks and uncle William Burroughs intoning about talking arseholes, it is a taster for their debut single "Two sides of sexual cynicism', which was released on July 1st on their own Corrupt Recording Company.

"The single is a not entirely fictional account of the band's trip to Bangkok", says Phil. "It catalogues some naughty adventures. It has the sleaziest blues rhythm outside of New Orleans, and our friends the Devil's Horns Blues Orchestra getting a little irregular on top."

Ennui draw you into their twisted universe with stark rhythms, gorgeous orchestrations and perverse poetic lyrics. They are up to no good at all, but are doing it with some finesse.

Sun Zoom Spark August 1995 (Paul Vickers)
Ennui "....and a black Russian between my legs." Ennui are a big dirty rat of a band living in the confines of dark tunnels and lonely corridors that lie deep under the sprawling metropolis we call Old London Town. Their singer Phil claims to be "camper than Christmas' and harbours an ego that could blast holes in the surface of Pluto. He's a truly outspoken monster with a crown of crepe paper and crushed insects. He prowls around decayed, northern seaside towns with his collection of rogues and scallywags performing bent and twisted tunes about transvestites and social misfits.

"Turn off the arc-lights/switch on the TV
I want the stars to be shamed /
By what's between you and me
But the stars they can't see us......
They're in love with themselves.'
Ennui - Je suis un Imbecile

"The original idea of Ennui was about musical sodomy and I've had it for years. You get this real organic, acoustic base to get the hippies in....it's like, "Wow....that sounds pretty....' then you absolutely ram your pork sword right up it's back-side....that's what our mandolin player, Andrew, is doing with his instrument!"

This comment from Phil may seem a little harsh, but this man's stew is bubbling over with anger and more than a little sprinkling of catholic guilt. The whole band is on a mission to take itself to the very edge of madness, to bring back the precious medallions that hang - ever so precariously - over the cliff's edge....in fact, Phil's live fast, die young, get resurrected and take on the appearance of a bull (and wreck the china shop) philosophy lead to him jumping out of a third story window at a showbiz party recently, just because the place was full of so many frauds with "not an ounce of talent between them."

Ennui aren't your usual band. Je suis un Imbecile is more like the missing song from an opera written by a Czechoslovakian peasant who sold his daughter to a pack of thieves and took his wife to auction to sell as a slave just to hear his masterpiece played once on Radio 2 before he died a horrible death.

I'm talking to the band in the Golden Lion. Its sister pub, the Queen Vic has just opened for business. The theme tune swirls around the bar, Mark Fowler orders another pint of Churchills, Aunt Nellie grumbles into her bottle of stout and Philip Kane talks about taking it up the tradesman's from enormous welsh man Tom Jones, ("I wouldn't mind Tom's bit of welsh rare bit up my sphincter.").....

The conversation drifts silk-like into an in-depth description of his "wanking machine' which comprises an old shoe box, a toilet roll cylinder and, of course, huge amounts of tissue paper to catch God's own treacle......The band has been on tour recently to such exotic resorts of Whitby and Scarboro' - to a mixed response. People are usually taken unawares by Ennui's live shows...perhaps something to do with the pork sword up the seaside.

Their avant garde songs seem to bleed out of my stereo speakers leaving awful stains on my bedroom floor. They deserve to be heard....clever, imaginative people who have stumbled upon a truly individual musical landscape. Merging classical instruments with modern sounds, which has always been a powerful combination. Ever since Venus in Furs the world has never been the same....knocked beautifully off centre.