Cissy is a hybrid; an unlikely meeting of Post-punk and Afrobeat asteroids, skewed in rhythm and time, joyful in collision and radiating polyrhythmic ripples from the core. Matt Dixon, Katie Moore, Gavin Montgomery and Matt Woodward create an unpredictable musical cartwheel, a homemade firework made by excitable kids on coffee. Dance beats become warped and fizz like electro space dust on the tongue. Angular guitar spikes jab playfully through the air, while bass and Mikrokorg keys surge through to complete the circuit.
Taking elements of Eno-era Talking Heads, Synthpunk pioneers The Units, Chicago street corner hustlers Heroic Doses and Fivestyle, Cissy also chews up further contemporary influences from bands like Mahjongg and LCD Soundsystem to blow up jittery, wonky and unflinchingly colourful sonic bubblegum. Like that Jawbreaker that tastes like ice-cream first, then cinnamon toast, then something weird that burns. ‘Ghost-ride The Whip’ sounds like Beefheart doing Afrobeat, while ‘Narp?’ comes on like an Electro-Afrobeat wigout, born from a squelching arpeggiator.
Members of Cissy have also played in The Lapse (US), The Dragon Rapide (UK), Origami (US) and currently play in Beards (UK) and Executive Legs (UK)
“I have tried, in the past, to express my love for Cissy. I have proclaimed them the most danceable band on our island. I can't describe, but I can factualise (it is a verb, I swear): Cissy is a band with some fantastic pedigree….biographies are rendered useless once Cissy hit the boards. They are tropical, adventurous and spikey.” Hayley Avron (Plan B magazine / The Iron Wagon).
JULY LIVE DATES
16.07 LONDON King’s Head Theatre
17.07 DERBY Big Blue Coffee Co
18.07 LEICESTER The Criterion
20.07 LONDON The Ivy House
22.07 SWINDON The Vic
23.07 BRIGHTON tbc
24.07 HITCHIN The George
25.07 MILTON KEYNES Windmill Hill Golf Club
26.07 LONDON The Windmill
27.07 LIVERPOOL Mello Mello
28.07 SOUTHEND Bar Lambs
29.07 READING South St Arts Centre
30.07 NOTTINGHAM Chameleon
31.07 LEEDS Brudenell Social Club