HIDE THE KNIVES, LOCK UP YOUR LIQUORS
The stars were aligning in the skies the night Paul-Ronney Angel was begged by a promoter to be the filling in a triple bill sandwich. Never one to turn down a knees-up, P-R realised he had 48 hours to put a band together. No problem. Trawling the dives and doss houses of London, he called in some favours, cracked some whips, and so it was that the Urban Voodoo Machine was cranked into life.

That was April 2003. Ever since then, this shadowy collective of neer-do-wells has been bringing the spirit of the carny to London, sleazing around the capitols seediest joints, aswell as hosting the now legendary parties attended by Chinese Elvis impersonators, strippers, fire jugglers and drunk girls with equal vim and vigour.2005 saw them play Glastonbury Festival, Lost Vagueness, Edinburgh Festival and Irelands Electric Picnic festival, and to give their audience something more than a black eye and an empty bottle to take home, gone and recorded their 5-track debut EP Ladies and Gentlemen, The Urban Voodoo Machine.

With their lurching sea shanties, debauched murder ballads and whiskey-soaked gypsy stomps, some reckon they're from the same stable of stallions as Tom Waits and Nick Cave; others point out the last gang in town swagger of The Clash and the hellhound blues that JL Hooker first dragged out of the swamp, but hey comparisons aside as Paul-Ronney says himself, "we play Bourbon Soaked Gypsy Blues BopnStroll, and we do it mighty well!"