By Jase Walker
In pursuit of ever more bizarre music and unusual musical experiences and in part thanks to ArcTanGent and its ever expanding list of oddball alumni, I’ve discovered HENGE. So to paint a picture, several intergalactic shaman/mystic types of varying degrees and er, species, have formed a musical outfit that produces all manner of wacky electronic songs with a smattering of psych rock to create music about mushrooms, Tardigrades, and travelling through space and all that cool shit.
With 2025 seeing them drop ‘Journey To Voltus B’ and embarking on a subsequent tour, I’ve got a quick jaunt down to Melkweg to catch them on a solo show and I promise you that I have not done a speedrun of Amsterdam’s various coffee and smart shops.
Beginning with a pre-flight safety announcement to brief the audience for the forthcoming trip, the various characters take the stage as takeoff sounds play and suddenly raw synths rumble the floor as we have liftoff! You’d think I’d be a bit more used to bizarre outfits considering how much I love bands like TWRP but this very much takes the cake for being absolutely bizarre. I would like to point out that this is a fully functioning plasma ball sat on their lead singer’s head also. We are very much on a cosmic journey tonight for better or worse but I’d say we’re off to a pretty bloody good start. Enthusiastically waving goodbye to planet Earth before commencing operation ‘Slingshot’.
I mean on the face of it, it’s quite easy to potentially write HENGE off as another psych-rock band with a bizarre costume wardrobe but the setlist they’re blasting through very much puts that to rest. There’s definitely elements of psychedelia in there, don’t get me wrong but it’s got a ton of funk, chiptune, middle-eastern traditional music, spaghetti western and.. uh, rap? I think?
Ultimately it’s hard to really pin down as HENGE seem very content to take general convention and quite literally fire it into the sun; gotta jettison that normality if you wanna go on an intergalactic adventure. “In fact it’s music that powers the spaceship!” because he’s feeling like he might be blabbing a bit much, anyway it’s time for ‘Tardigrades’. This song on its own is standalone proof that a silly song can definitely be a very good song that is very much worth a bit of a boogie to.
I feel like I’m half caught between a music show and pantomime considering the amount of campy between song chatter leading into some wacky synthy music that wouldn’t be exactly out of place on BBC’s seminal cult classic science lesson-cum-comedy series, ‘Look Around You’. This show has been like a complete fever dream that has kept me grinning ear to ear throughout the whole show though, what a fanatically unique live performance.
Much like the performances on the fringe of modern music that almost demand a zealous following such as Fat Dog and Psychedelic Porn Crumpets, the crowd here is going absolutely fucking nuts for this show. There’s zero pretense here of being the biggest fan because you know the words or whatever, there’s just a bunch of people just wanting to lose their shit for an hour or so and leave feeling like they’ve had a fucking great time. At times I feel like we’ve entered some sort of dark techno rave in a sudden departure from the earlier part of the set.
In fact, I don’t know how many people may be familiar with a particularly infamous internet animator and musician, Cyriak, but man, do some of their extended instrumental parts remind me of them. The sort of dirty techno-y samples used in addition to almost Drum and Bass style drumming reminds me so strongly of Cyriak that it can’t be coincidence. There’s also something else that seems to shine through and it’s weirdly the sort of punk that The Stranglers are famous for, that mix of aggressive British punk with strong synth backing, I mean in addition to being quite silly as well. Further to the whole Cyriak thing, some parts even seem reminiscent of Mr Oizo’s ‘Flat Beat’ as well. I had machinations over what tonight’s should could possibly be but I have to fully admit, it wasn’t this, but in the absolute best possible way.
HENGE make another solid entry into my “well this is fucking weird but holy shit” list alongside the likes of TWRP, Fat Dog, Psychedelic Porn Crumpets, Thumpasaurus and King Gizzard And The Wizard Lizard. This is a group that truly does not give a flying fuck about musical convention, it doesn’t matter if it’s silly or ridiculous as long as it goes and it makes you want to dance like nobody is watching.
You can’t pigeonhole a band like HENGE, you just need to dive headfirst into their music with no reference point and then go see a damn live show. This lot know they’re a bit silly but absolutely embrace it, and I know for a fact the next time they come back I’ll be there and dragging whoever I can along to witness this majestic space journey with me.
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