The Entomological Circus Horror Show

• a band introduction by Alphonse Q. Crique

I have already introduced a lot of bands, but this one is quite different. Rather than birds (who most people will agree are natural musicians, especially where vocal performance is concerned), this is a band of various insects.
The Entomological Circus Horror Show and Travelling We Are the Road Group Section, to give them their full name as of this, their third tour as a fully realised group, are a band consisting of four members who go under stage names
and generally perform wearing strange, distorted rubber masks with metal parts and reflective one-way glass hiding their eyes

The members are as follows (which is probably the sentence I have typed the most often in my long history as a celebrated music critic and commentator on music-related social and sociopolitical phenomena):

Ensemble #1 is the emperor gum moth lead bassist and vocalist, playing a custom-made double-necked bass and taking full advantage of any and all limbs to perform complex lead basslines while simultaneously performing similarly
complex (though, it must be said, rarely particularly melodic) vocal parts in most of the groups compositions. I admit I was skeptical at first of their approach, but over the course of the show they very much impressed me and won
me over. A lead bassist of this calibre does not come along every day by any means. Their playing was absolutely top notch and I am forced to admit that I may have a new absolute favourite lead bass player among all currently extant
musical groups. Varden Lilyco of the Nightwalk Trees, who pioneered the bass as a lead instrument, is of course still the most historically significant lead bass player, but even she probably could not perform many of the lines in this
group’s pieces. When all is said and done there is simply nothing quite like Ensemble #1‘s lead bass playing and that in itself is laudable. They are absolutely unique as far as I know

Dance Command 9 at first appears to do very little for the most part, but this is deceptive. The stage presence of this initially unimpressive hornet is actually completely vital to the whole atmosphere of the group’s live shows.
Without her, their music and its accompanying visual aspects simply would not work as well as it does, and when her surprisingly emotionally striking, otherworldly synth playing does appear it is always a vital component of the
composition and performance. She shows admirable restraint as a musician. I am not interested in the argument put forth by some of my colleagues that synthesisers “should be used sparingly”, but in her they have a great example of how
using them sparingly CAN be a good musical choice (as can using any instrument to any extent)

The other two members perform heavily shrouded in shadow. Very little is known about Seventh Context (on dual saxophone) and Alter Fifth (on an instrument even I can’t identify which may actually have been invented by the Entomological
Circus Horror Show themselves), but their performances at the shows I have seen were excellent and their willingness to allow their individual identities to largely vanish into the whole of the music they are involved in creating is
impressive (much more impressive, honestly, than any self-important rock star could ever be to me). Even their species is unknown (though most suggest that Seventh Context is probably some sort of cricket)

The Entomological Circus Horror Show is a fairly political avant-prog sort of band, if I were to categorise them (they do somewhat defy much useful categorisation), their lyrical and thematic concerns having to do primarily with the
treatment of insects, bugs, arthropods, arachnids and so on in society. Their music is knowingly difficult and atonal and all the more fascinating for it, though it also has some moments of relatively conventional harmony - parts of
“Where Every Hive Knows You Don’t Have A Name” are in C minor and G major and “Colder Now the Scrape of Menaced Doors” actually bases itself around a repeating conventional chord progression, throwing in outside notes and noise
increasingly as it goes on - and, unfortunately, they seem to play to fairly unreceptive crowds. As far as I know they have never performed more than once in the same venue

The Entomological Circus Horror Show and Travelling We Are the Road Group Section is thought to have emerged from the dissolution of Roadbomb Knives, allegedly over an argument about whether or not Ensemble #1 was being overly
negative about what they saw as a prejudice against insects for their appearance as they had begun to dislike performing live with that band (in which they were the only member not to be a bird or mammal). Personally I do think they
have a point, and Roadbomb Knives were not (and still are not) a very good band in my opinion

The Entomological Circus Horror Show and Travelling We Are the Road Group Section release their first EP quite soon, which I have of course pre-ordered

-- band introduction for 22/13/106, Sounds and the Soundly Magazine volume 9