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(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
The Lemon Kittens were two young multi-strumentalists involved in
multimedia art-performance/theater:
Danielle Dax, a fan of electronic music, biblical
mysticism and middle-eastern vocal music, and
Karl Blake, a veteran jazz musician.
Their music harked back to Canterbury's jazz-rock, to Brian Eno's avantgarde
rock, and to the nonsense quality of much British rock.
The EP Spoonfed And Writhing and the
album We Buy A Hammer For Daddy are cacophonous and chaotic, although
the melodies are often charming and pastoral.
With the EP Cake Beast (1980) the tracks began to expand and assume complex structures.
The band's style matures on the full-length album Big Dentist (1982).
The eleven-minute piece They Are Both Dirty is a
dissonant circus of grotesque Dadaistic gestures. For three minutes Blake
indulges in all sorts of acoustic and electronic sounds. Then Dax begins to
hum accompanied by a piano. As the music returns to a clownish fanfare, she
intones an operatic litany. Guitar noises and tribal drums take over, but
the end is solemnly-performed funeral music.
Blake's and Dax's collage art is still naive, but certainly full of surprises.
Blake displays his penchant for absurd, neurotic jazz in Mylmus, and
then weds it with lunar synth-pop in No Night Not Shared.
(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)
While Danielle Dax launched a brilliant solo career, Karl Blake, already the driving force behind Prehensile Tales (Normal, 1983), indulged with Shock Headed Peters in a technological funk halfway between Tom Waits, Pop Group, and Gang Of Four. The album Not Born Beautiful (EL, 1985 World Serpent, 1994) was followed by the EPs I Bloodbrother Be (EL, 1984), Kissing Of Gods (EL, 1985), and Life Extinguisher (Beach Culture, 1986), even attempting to build a bridge between heavy metal and industrial music.
The group disbanded after Fear Engine (Produkt Korps, 1987), an anthology of unreleased tracks and live rarities, later reissued as Fear Engine II (Cyclops, 1993) with added new versions of older songs.
Karl Blake, also bassist for Sol Invictus, and head of the Evil Twin project with David Mellor (whose releases include The Black Spot (Livesey, 1994), featuring When Dying is Saying That You Want to Live, and the long composition Palace Of Worms (1998)), as well as the solo albums Paper Thin Religion (World Serpent, 1992) and Mandibles En Route To Toothless (Swordex Hieroglyph Proper, 1995), resumed the Shock Headed Peters project with only David Knight.
Several Headed Enemy (Cyclops, 1993), however, is a confused, unfocused album lacking strong songs.
Tendercide (Cyclops, 1996), with Sally Doherty on vocals, kept the project alive but without justifying its existence with its music
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