Momus @ Star & Shadow Cinema on 23rd July

Words: Craig Wilson

There are few cult figures more disturbing than Momus, and on 23rd July, the enigmatic Berlin-based singer will play an extremely rare gig at the Star And Shadow Cinema in Newcastle. With songs about paedophilia, adultery and gender dysmorphia, Momus has been unsettling audiences for nearly twenty years, and counts the Pet Shop Boys, David Bowie and Marilyn Manson as acolytes. In Japan he is followed by screaming teenage girls with their own blog filled with candid snaps of the man with the eye-patch.
Born in Scotland, Momus (aka Nick Currie) gained an early musical grounding in the post-punk Postcard scene around Orange Juice and Josef K, a later version of whom he joined when Paul Haig left the band. Although The Happy Family did not last long, Currie had started to impress critics and audiences with his songwriting, drawing on the Francophone influences of Jacques Brel and Serge Gainsbourg. He drew attention from label bosses Mike Alway at Cherry Red, and Alan McGee at Creation, who signed him and he produced classic early albums such as The Poison Boyfriend, Tender Pervert and Hippopotomumus, and had a minor hit with single The Hairstyle Of The Devil.
Moving to Japan, where he has always been popular, Momus wrote for and produced J-pop superstar Kahime Karie, herself a collaborator with Cornelius and Jim O'Rourke.
No stranger to physical dysfunction, the 'tender Scottish pervert' has not only written a song wherein Clockwork Orange composer and sex-change musician Wendy Carlos travels back in time to meet and marry his pre-operation self, but now wears an eye-patch due to losing an eye after contracting acanthamoeba keratitis from a contact lens case washed with Greek tap water.
Momus now lives in Berlin, and fills time between recording and very rare gigs by writing about art, design and fashion for magazines such as Wired, Vice and Index. He worked as artist/lecturer in residence in Hokkaidō, Japan and in Venice and in 2006 was resident artist at the Whitney Biennial in New York City. Click Opera, his blog on Live Journal, sees him keep a daily diary of his philosophies, tastes, fetishes and fantasies – much of it influenced by his love of teenage Japanese culture and technological advance.
Recent albums have seen Momus explore a sound he described as folktronic (it was Momus who coined the phrase with his album of the same name), and his collaborators have included Anne Laplantine, John Talaga and Toog. This recent work has been described by Momus as "combining musique concrete and the oriental theatre sounds of kabuki and Cantonese opera" and his style as "a unique mix of pastiche, unreliable narration, role playing, kulturkritik, and provocative
comedy".
His performance at the Star And Shadow will be a one-off date, and an even rarer trip to the UK. This two-hour "chronological cruise of never-before-performed songs" will be a highlight of the Newcastle gigging year.
Tickets are £10 in advance.

www.imomus.com