EYELESS IN GAZA Plague of years

Description

Eyeless In Gaza might sound like the opening to the most disturbing classified ad in history, but it is in fact the post-punk band formed by Martyn Bates and Peter Becker. The name is in fact derived from the Aldous Huxley novel of the same name, which was in turn prompted by a line from John Milton's Samson Agnonistes. Right that's enough trivia. This disc sits as a companion piece to the Martyn Bates solo retrospective (also listed this week) and looks back over Eyeless In Gaza's career, which began back in 1980. The music on the disc falls between two camps: the more expressive, songlike and lyrical, and the more experimental. In either case, the music certainly sounds like it's come from the same creative source, with a strange array of percussive and electronic instruments making up the duo's sound palette alongside the more usual new wave electric guitars. Lyrically these songs are massively engrossing, and there's an evocatively bleak atmospheric hanging over the music throughout. A great opportunity to discover a largely overlooked band.