Extra Life – ‘Head Shrinker’
Tyondai Braxton (from Battles) remix free track here: taken from the forthcoming ‘Black Hoodie’ ep
LOAF Recordings – Released Monday 7th June 2010
Fronted by guitarist/vocalist Charlie looker, who spent six years in Zs, has played with John Zorn, was a one- time member of Dirty Projectors (Rise Above period) and has worked with Anthony Braxton, Daniel Carter, etc. Extra Life make powerful and complex, medieval-tinged urban prog rock that is as immediately impressive as it is surprisingly intriguing.
Black Hoodie is one of the most accessible tracks from the recent Extra Life album ‘Made Flesh’, a surprisingly gentle ode to the comforts of the Black Hoodie, yet as you would expect from Extra Life it’s still full of doubt, angst and darkness.
A beguiling mixture of plucked guitar and piano with interweaving saxophone and violin all topped off with Charlie Looker’s extraordinary voice, part Morrissey, part medieval street singer, once again Extra Life prove themselves to be one of the most unusual and distinctive bands on the planet right now. Only Xiu Xiu come close in terms of intensity and torment.
Black Hoodie’ is followed by the unexpected but fantastic cover of R. Kelly’s Your Body’s Callin’, which transforms the original soft soul ballad into an existential meditation on love and lust with an undercurrent of menace and addiction. Like Arthur Russell singing with the Velvet Underground or Tim Buckley jamming with Godspeed You Black Emperor, this really has to be one of the best cover versions ever to reach your ears.
The EP concludes with a Tyondai Braxton (Battles) remix of ‘Head Shrinker’, a mesmerising re-invention of Extra Life as a futuristic robo disco group whose skewed tones are smeared over stretched beats to create an intricate web of electronic sound that is as radical as it is listenable.
‘Looker presents a personal vision as bewildering as his resumé is impressive… Everything here grates and admirably so’. WIRE magazine
Extra Life has been played on our Resonance FM radio on every single show this year so far, we’ve Gone through the entire album now, it’s the album of the year’. Resonance FM
(London)
memorable, multi-layered, disturbing even, all working together to make spectacular, irresistible entity’. The Organ
If you were a fan of the intense, avant-garde wanderings on the band’s debut LP, Secular Works, you might be surprised at this one but in no way disappointed” VICE
the sheer visceral power of ‘Made Flesh’ is consistently intriguing.” The Fly
Extra Life will be on tour in the UK in June
04.06.2010 UK, Cardiff, Cardiff Arts Institute
05.06.2010 IRL, Dublin, Whelans
06.06.2010 UK, Belfast, Crescent Arts Centre
08.06.2010 UK, Liverpool, The Kazimier
09.06.2010 UK, Hull, The Adelphi
10.06.2010 UK, London Corsica Studios
you can view the ‘Head Shrinker’ video which Charlie Looker himself described as “SICK” here:
Extra Life – Headshrinker from Lo+LOAF TV on Vimeo.
I'm a self-confessed musical nut with an eclectic taste ranging from lo-fi indie to crushing heavy metal. I also make a blizzard of noise in my band Final Coil (recently seen deafening audiences in the midlands area). I also like cheese. Cheese is possibly the single greatest food (if one excludes bacon). Sometimes I write songs about cheese... but not often 
