Friday 12 June 2015

Balearic Assassins of Love 2015




'The Balearic Assassins of Love’ – a hirsute raggle-taggle collective of vinyl junkies who worship at the Technics altar of sunrise and the quadrophonic wickerman of sunset like 80s Kicker-shod party druids. Channelling ley-lines from Ibiza to the Norfolk broads they intentionally encapsulate the spirit of Acid house, the emotional joy of pop, the laid-back loose feel of the ‘White Isle’ with whatever else works for them there and then! Forever on an eternal quest to slay the dragon of segregation and the pigeon-hole of pretence they gather frequently and mix together musical forms as diverse as hypno Latvian Acid Skiffle, Mystic Tibetan Yacht Rock and Hokus Pocus Voodoo Shizzle to create that ecl*ctic, highly danceable, couldn’t care less, ‘last day of the holiday’ feel so beloved of British People in Hot Weather.

A seemingly endless array of line-ups, ‘even if it’s me and yer Granny on spoons it’s still BAOL’, the hardcore remain: King Sunny Ade P, Steve KIW and Picko-d along with essential visual vibe controller Mark Day. BAOL maintain a freestyle expression that seamlessly binds sporadic vinyl inspiration through technical flair with copious amounts of nippy sweeties and are still convinced that Ally Pally was better than Spike Island. Equally at home playing achingly beautiful downtempo sunset and woodsmoke campervan sessions to happy-times hands-in-the-air hay-bale raves, the BAOL straddle all genres like a well-heeled Achillea colossus in smiley T-shirt and Day-Glo poncho. From medative, spiritual moody hippy-trippy vinyl to primal chant/tribal boogie 12” records for BAOL nothing is out of bounds, and there has never been any such thing as a guilty pleasure!

Once famously described as ‘A cross between the opening party at Amnesia and the last days of Sodom and Gomorrah’ a BAOL party needs to be witnessed to be truly felt. Formed sometime in the last century they have played a huge amount of parties never repeating a set or compromising on venue; a beach front Acid drenched Scout hut, an ex-communist Prague Nuclear Underground Blast Bunker, the Lord Mayor 's Carnival, Primavera, strobe flecked Brighton basements and beach bars, 12 hour’s down by the Vltava river, boat parties, Mammoth pre-fire sets on Hastings pier, Numerous North London clubs and Bars, house parties, beach parties, sunset/sunrise sets in beautiful Sussex fields, windswept horseboxes, Mayday Pagan all-dayers, Leeds and Manchester Über bars, European speakeasies, and Fawlty Towersesque hotel cellar bars, always with a smile and a laugh and a joke. Some people believe music is a matter of life and death, of course it reads like a wind-up but BAOL assure you it is much, much more important than that. Expect the unexpected available for bookings.