Luxury Stranger + The InSect

A night of Dark Alternative music at one of the best UK independent venues for capturing genuine moments of musical brilliance: Luxury Stranger play their first Nottingham show since Feb 2020 (thanks, Pandemic!), along with one of LS’ favourite bands to share a stage with – The InSect.

Luxury Stranger (www.luxurystranger.net)
For those of you only just discovering Luxury Stranger, LS is a progressive independent rock band – keeping an eye (and ear) on the present and future while being inspired by various fashions and music trends from the 1930s to 1990s, elements of classical, soul and jazz music, and written literature. The project started in August 2006 when frontman / singer-songwriter Simon York when, after a five-year period away from the music industry, wrote and recorded the Desolation album.

With the first live band line-up, Luxury Stranger recorded the ‘Commitment and Discipline’ album, followed by the non-album releases Empty Men EP, Nothing Holy EP and the Face EP. During these times, and various line-up changes, the band has continued to tour extensively across the UK and in Europe, building a loyal and obsessive fan-base. A third album, Darkness Falls Upon The Light was recorded by Simon working with Guy Elderfield (who was in the engineer / co-producer and collaborator chair), Kevin Bales (Spiritualized / Dave Gahan and the Soulsavers) on drums, and sonic artist Robert Squirrel guesting on piano and trumpet for the title track. After recruiting a new live line-up, DFUTL was promoted heavily through touring across the UK and Europe and world-wide radio airplay.

As well as gaining critical acclaim, Luxury Stranger music has featured in television, advertising and film, and is a melodic wall of sound that gives a majestically slick and regimented cushion for Simon’s vocals, “easily one of the finest vocalists in the UK right now.” (Reflections of Darkness magazine). With comparisons to the likes of David Bowie, Pearl Jam, Scott Walker, Bobby Womack, Depeche Mode, The Police and U2 – a Post-Pandemic Luxury Stranger is now working on a new album, Above and Below and there are plans to tour this album…

“One of the UK’s stand out dark alternative acts” (Sphere Magazine)

“Devoid of any pretension and heart breakingly sincere, “Take my hand, I can save you now” sings Simon, meaning every word. It feels like trespassing into a broken man’s psyche.” (live review, Left Lion magazine)

“…we have nothing against Editors, why should we, but these three Brits actually are at least as good as them.” (Luminous Dash magazine)

“Though the scene has had a feast or famine existence recently, the city[Nottingham]’s hard working Luxury Stranger has done more than most to keep the flag flying” (Neil Anderson, Vive Le Rock magazine, issue 46 July 2017)

“Think of early U2 when they were still good. This is of that calibre.” (Penny Black Music magazine)

“It’s about emotive immediacy, twice-underlined by the vocals, which apparently come not from a teaching book but straight from the bones…” (Reflections of Darkness magazine)

The InSect (www.wearetheinsect.com)
To get a better idea of what to tell you of London’s The InSect, (in our opinion one of the most excitingly dark and theatrical bands out there), we spoke with frontman and founder member, Ed Banshee…

1. Who or what is The Insect?
The InSect (notice the capitals) name stems from two sources. The first is an acknowledgment of the insect themes that have run through my entire writing career (Insect Boy / Creepy Crawly from Screaming Banshee Aircrew and We Are Insect from the final Partly Faithful album, Lazarus Under Glass).

The second is a play on words, ‘The In Sect’, that likewise continues the religious themes from previous works and my last band, Partly Faithful. The InSect is a loose sect of people working towards our common musical and performance goals.

2. We hate to ask this question as we don’t like to pigeon hole but what does The Insect sound like – are there perhaps three bands you’ve been likened to?
A cliché question unfortunately resulting in a cliché answer… we don’t really sound like anyone else. I suppose you could say we contain elements of my previous bands due to my contributions, but we really struggle to work out what we sound like for questions like this. We just write songs we like.

There’s an increasing play on lead and backing vocal interchange that brings to mind Virgin Prunes or The March Violets but the songs are generally short and pithy in structure, somewhat like early 80s pop.

We’d actually be interested in peoples opinions on this, especially when we release our new singles Inside Out Boy and Mister Everything (and fall) later this year which once again move things forward.

3. Where can people find your music to listen to and purchase?
We’re running a little behind in our release schedule at the moment (we have at least four singles to release this year), but the latest tracks can always be found over on our Bandcamp site, where you can download or order our official CDs.

Our debut EP, Cracks is available on there:
https://wearetheinsect.bandcamp.com/

We also bring copies of our CDs and merch to live shows so you can usually pick them up there.

4. What does the future hold for a post-Pandemic InSect?
Interesting question – our lineup is pretty fluid at the moment due to people leaving during the Pandemic so everything is up for the taking and our future direction remains largely unwritten.

We’ll be continuing our Cracks EP promotion shows and will soon be releasing a set of completely new singles. We have live shows coming up at Scarborough’s Shadow Of The Castle Festival on 25th June, London Electrowerks (supporting Clan Of Xymox) on 13th August, 7th October with Luxury Stranger in Nottingham and a Carpe Noctum show in Leeds on 12th November.