WELCOME TO the weird and wonderful world of Dawn Of The Replicants, a forbidden planet plagued with locusts, lunatics, bats, batshit and skewed tunes with lines like "A lampbug's breasts dangle centre stage/A baby bug sucks sweet royalty" ('10 Sea Birds'). As you may have guessed, this Scottish five-piece are a refreshing dose of anomalous oddness in a time of mediocrity.
They're also rabidly prolific, having released a good half-dozen EPs and one album in their short career. "No-one lets you do the old two-albums-a-year thing anymore," singer/lyricist Paul Vickers complains. "There was a point a couple of years ago where I was writing two or three tunes a week on the four-track. I dunno what I was driven by, the fear of God or something!"
The band's debut album One Head, Two Arms, Two Legs (a respectable 10 on the Hot Press dice, as thrown by the redoubtable Nick Kelly) shares the same twisted visions as the likes of Captain Beefheart, David Lynch, Tom Waits and The Pixies, boasting lyrics overflowing with nonsensical but profound non-sequiturs.
"Those people definitely influence us, but really, the lyrics are written in the way I've always written," Paul tells me in the bar of Bloom's Hotel, shortly before his band's Irish debut at the Mean Fiddler. "There is a cut-up thing - songs like 'Float On A Raft' have got sort of fragmented meanings. I used to write poetry, and the difference is that soundbites are much more necessary in lyrics, whereas in poetry you can sort of meander off a bit."
Dawn Of The Replicants formed two years ago in the small Scottish border town of Galashiels, which is described by the band as an "almost redneck" environment. So, is the band's rather unhinged worldview down to their provincial origins?
"It is a different way of thinking," Paul affirms. "You're not as affected by trends and things. More people in London know about us than in Gala, even though it's our hometown. They're totally oblivious to it, apart from a recent article in the Daily Record which caused a few ructions."
One song on the album, 'Hogwash Farm', is a crooked evocation of rural claustrophobia and suspicion, while Paul's explanatory notes for 'Field On A Raft' read, "coaxing rabbits into silent submission before lambing". DOTR definitely thrive on the fear and weirdness of country living, but, as the singer admits, this is nothing new in rock 'n' roll.
"Captain Beefheart and Tom Waits also have a certain sort of redneck punk attitude to them," he points out. "I always imagine Captain Beefheart as someone who's stuck in this dusty old desert town, aloof even from the characters that live in that town. I like that slight enigma that people who aren't from somewhere that's got an established cultural background sometimes put on things. 'Hogwash Farm' is like, 'Well, we're all fine here, but what about the people livin' up the road?' It's that not knowing what's going on under the surface, the places and characters that rural areas breed. It's just, I dunno . . . hogwash!"
A band like Dawn Of The Replicants will inevitably attract a certain amount of crazies, but Paul has no doubt as to who takes the disco biscuit.
"Ah, the father and son combination, that was amazing," he remembers. "There was this guy who was like the oldest rocker in town, he had a very severe face, a leather jacket, looked like he'd been to see every band that had come to Tunbridge Wells for the last 30 years. And it looked like he'd started getting his son involved, who was dressed like Jarvis Cocker, the full Oxfam get-up. And his dad kept sayin' to me, 'When you get up there and you're in front of those people, remember, you're The Man. That's what you are, The Man! Say it to me, son!' And I had to keep saying, 'I'm The Man!'"
Out of the mouths of loons . . . n
* Dawn Of The Replicants' I Smell Voodoo EP is out now on EastWest.