8. ElectrelaneThe Power Out

I love Electrelane. Coil aside, I really didn’t find much ‘gay’ music for a long time, and the bits I did hear, I wasn’t interested in. Then I started listening to Kill Rock Stars, Bikini Kill, got really excited for the Le Tigre album – one of my first internet purchases. I also started working at this bookshop and met someone called Rachel, who’s still a friend. She let slip she was in a band called Comet Gain signed to Kill Rock Stars. Me and Rachel would recommend JT LeRoy novels to ladies who came in for Mills & Boon. So I found this music that was written and performed largely by women. I knew performers who were lesbian and trans in this post-Queeruption world, and met loads of people through a night and label called Homo Crime. 

Slightly later there was a band called Leopard Leg who released one CD-R and half an LP. There was also Lesbo Pig, with Irene Revell and Ros Murray in, and Ros was also in Electrelane. I first heard the I Want To Be The President EP, but I just love this album. Until then I’d found political music to often be about the message, but not the music. With Electrelane, Le Tigre, Lesbo Pig, Leopard Leg, you could do something political, queer, feminist, gay, and you could make really great music.

As a gay man interested in experimental music, it felt like for a long time it was just me, Philip Marshall, Leo Chadburn. I just didn’t know anyone. I still remember going to Nag Nag Nag, and occasionally some straight people would be borderline homophobic to you, but it was a gay club! Now you could get someone chucked out for that. I look at all these amazing people now, like Valentina Magaletti, Lyra Pramuk, Colin Self, then people like Patrick Wolf, and Bishi – it feels like there’s this brilliant, not intentional group of LGBTQ+ people of various identities who are owning it. And fuck it, I’m part of that group too.