An unsanitized blitz of electro-punk fury, the latest collaboration from Long Legged Creatures and Joshua Zero is a strong reinvention for both.
When a track opens with a line as in-your-face as “Let’s cut this hyper-real, cyber-real bullshit baby and work on what you love,” what follows has to be equally daring, or the whole track will fall flat. Luckily for us, though, across the four and a half minutes of “Antistar”, electro-rock outfit Long Legged Creatures provide a pounding backdrop for singer Joshua Zero’s incoming tirade. Flamboyant and maximalist, the track not only meets the lofty ego of the opening but damn near eclipses it.
With a pounding four-on-the-floor drum beat, pulsating bass, and a barrage of noise coming in elegantly from all angles, “Antistar” comes up on a bed of impressively arranged sonics. Halfway between a warehouse club night and the grimey cacophony of city living, the world that Long Legged Creatures conjure is menacing and fiendish. In that sense, they’re a perfect match for the vocals of Joshua Zero who stands atop a soapbox high above the late-stage capitalist hellscape he attacks. While the occasional trite jab on “meme culture” and “Capitalist FM” feel forced, the unwavering performance of Zero enhanced by electronically affected backing vocals holds your attention throughout.
As we are brought into syncopated half-times, and faced with warbling vocal menace, the constant proclamation that Zero is “an Antistar”, while undefined, feels so filled with conviction that you’re led to buy into every second of the monologuing production on offer. While the track leaves me feeling used and abused, I somehow still keep coming back for more. Let’s hope the two acts continue in this raw manner for a while longer.
Writing by Varun Govil
Photography by Sophie Jouvenaar