+ support from Paddy Steer

Attention Humans! This is HENGE.

We are not from this world.

We bring you music from distant planets.

We offer this gift for the edification of humankind… so that eventually your species may put an end to war and set up new homes in space.

Extra-terrestrial joymongers – HENGE – have been delighting audiences in the UK and Europe since they landed on Planet Earth nine years ago. Their scintillating live performances earned them ‘Best Live Act’ at the Independent Festival Awards and they have since cemented their reputation with three acclaimed albums, numerous tours and regular main-stage festival appearances.

Their music escapes definition, but occupies a space between rave and prog rock that nobody knew existed. It is energetic, subversive and invigoratingly playful, jovially going ‘where no one has gone before’. Ultimately, HENGE are spreading a message of hope which leaves audiences feeling amused and uplifted in equal measures.

Paddy Steer

Paddy Steer is a Zelig-like character along the timeline of Manchester’s musical activity. It’s a testament to his musicality that he has played with such a wide range of music and artists over the years, be it as a bass player, drummer, Hawaiian guitarist etc. or all these roles at the same time.

In rejection of the notion of ‘immaculate reproduction’, live performances from Paddy’s own project err more daringly and admirably on the frontier of chaotic abstraction, expression and focussed blunder, dice rolling down the hill in case of duende, as from behind his stacked array of instruments, the anarchically intrepid punk gargles through a vocoder with his xylophone, all a-clatter under disco lights and doilies.

This has been reduced down over a long period of time, and applied coat by coat with subtle mastery, for richness, depth, and vivid texture, as if it were some magnificent curry, or a samurai sword.

sounds like a Swiss cuckoo clock made of egg boxes and horsehair, glued together by an African Moog player in a Vietnamese iron monger’s shop”.

Graham Massey