Gag Salon

Frenetic art-rock quartet Gag Salon announce debut EP ‘Get A Load of This Guy’ for June 16th via Blitzcat Records. New single ‘My Gun’ out today.

Styled as the surviving members of a function band gone up in flames, the guinea pigs of experimental surgery and new age psychotherapy, Gag Salon are fundamentally a pop group, inviting you to interrogate the undesirable, and exorcise your demons via LCD intensity and Beefheartian wonk. 

And from the scuzzy, discordant opening guitar stabs of ‘My Gun’ - akin to the Psycho strings on a sugar-rush - Gag Salon set out this manic stall. The spiky, paranoid track at times feels like a turn in a tumble dryer with a prepared piano and full drum-set - these moments of chaos providing the counterpoint for the relative airiness of a quasi-epic and revelatory chorus. 

Thematically it’s a black comedy confession of male fragility and moral decline - echoing the nervous keyboard vamp. It climaxes with a stop-start avant-funk jam, broadcasting from somewhere beneath the guilt ridden floorboards of your period conversion. 

As lead vocalist and guitarist Joseph Mumford surmises - “It’s about a very agitated and isolated young man taking his anger out on the world”. 

The four-piece teamed up with Catholic Action’s Chris McCrory on production duties to commit this zany maelstrom to historical record. 

Already catching the attention of indie gatekeepers NME, Rough Trade and BBC 6 Music’s Tom Robinson with debut single ‘Horses’, and with shows under their belts alongside The Cool Greenhouse, Mush and Blue Bendy, the opening gambit from Gag Salon is charging down the hill at top speed. 

The ‘Get A Load of This Guy’ EP  is out June 16th via Blitzcat Records – preceded by ‘My Gun’, out now.

Gag Salon are Joseph Mumford (guitar, vocals, synth), Tom Dimmock (keys, synth, backing vocals, piano), Sebastian Bowden (bass) and Ayden Spiller (drums, percussion).