www.the-phoebus-mass.co.uk

John Spencer and Christina Martinez, Ike and Tina Turner and now continuing the great tradition of husband and wife acts are Chris and Lee Turtell of The Phoebus Mass. They break up, they make up, they fight and they dream. Not content with airing their dirty washing in public they’ve put it down on their “First” EP released in March 2005 by Loud Plastic records.

You don’t dream up a band like The Phoebus Mass overnight. You need one of them to spend his formative years playing in a succession of bands that sound like an aircraft taking off, with drummers who can’t keep time and bassists who can’t tell the time. You make him play endless gigs in small towns to small audiences who are more interested in the beer than the band before letting him discover that his wife (who’s only experience of performing is singing along to Joni Mitchell, in the bath) has a voice to die for and an attitude to match.

Their recording studio doubles as a two bedroom terraced house amongst a cosmopolitan community in the West Country. Here, surrounded by Polish social clubs, Moroccan takeaways and the occasional axe wielding neighbour they record vocals in the kitchen, guitars in the bathroom and cello in the hallway producing a sound that has been described as “Kristin Hersh nicking Jaz Coleman’s mic at a Killing Joke rehearsal whilst Steve Albini is playing guitar with the Sundays in the living room and you begin to start getting the picture.”

You don’t write songs as powerful as “Wake up Call” or the heart rendering “All I Want” without having been through the emotional wringer a few times. Chris and Lee really feel it. A passion for the music and for each other, to paraphrase Lee “for what it’s worth, you know I’m right”

“Made Up Happiness” is featured on the debut CD EP out now on Loud Plastic Records and available online now.

Sun 27th March - The Barge Inn, Bradford-on-Avon (acoustic set)
Wed 30th March - The Hub, Whicker Hill, Trowbridge