Turbowolf are going places. Those places being SxSW, Canadian Music Week, the BBC Maida Vale radio studios, and the screen of your tellybox. Hugh Platt found himself caught up in the mania.

“Party constantly, day and night.” “Polishing skulls and all that cool shit.” “Eating a lot of tangerines and other citrus fruits.” Those were just some of the answers offered up to Thrash Hits by Bristol-based digi-punk buccaneers, Turbowolf, when asked what they do when they’re not detonating their explosive live set like a explosion of hallucinogenic swamp gas.

In the relative anonymity of an East London boozer a few hours before a gig, moustachioed frontman Chris G, and dreadlocked guitarist Andy G, are both in high spirits. The band – completed by drummer, Chris D, sitting to one side, intently adjusting a snare drum, and bassist Jeremy, mysterious in his absence – have every right to be – not only are they playing Canadian Music Week (in fact they’re playing it today, if you’re reading on the day of publication) and several shows at SxSW (including a show with the mighty Gallows), but their upcoming schedule also includes a BBC Radio Session in Arpil and a Levi’s Ones To Watch show in May. Not bad for four crazy-looking dudes in an unsigned band from the West Country.

“When I turned up in Bristol and he was there waiting for me,” Chris G says of his first meeting Andy. The wiry frontman is sitting cross-legged on an oversized leather chair, peeling an orange, and Thrash Hits finds it increasingly difficult to take our eyes off his impressive ‘tache.

“We sort of fell together really,” Andy, continues. “Someone had some drums, someone had a guitar, and so we just used to play together every now and then. Then we first put the original Turbowolf together, the rock’n’roll Turbowolf, that’s when we first started doing it seriously.” And that ‘original Turbowolf’, isn’t quite the hypercolour mesh of leftfield electronics and low-slung gutter punk that we love so much about the Turbowolf we fell in love with.

Watch Turbowolf in action

“We were just like some sort of Motörhead-style rock band,” Andy explains.  “It was brilliant fun and we thought it was great, but then one day we had this revelation that we’d never be better than Motörhead, so what was the point? We liked all this other weird music as well, so when we saw a keyboard in the window of a second-hand shop, we thought ‘fuck it, we’ll have that’, and since then it’s just exploded.”

“We wanted to meld our influences into something that we could play to people as rad party music,” Chris G enthuses. And as everyone who’s dropped their jaw in awe at the manic sounds Turbowolf carve out will testify, these boys put on one heck of party.

———–

In part 2 of this interview, Turbowolf talk about singles, what’s right & wrong about London town, and what else we can expect from them in 2009. Keep ‘em peeled as it’ll be on ThrashHits.com very soon.