Ho99o9: Strafing Stradbally with sound and fury | Electric Picnic

You would like these New Jersey guys when they’re angry

You have probably never been as angry about anything as these two New Jersey punk rappers seem to be about everything. Ho99o9 (which is pronounced with a hard stress on each individual numeral), don’t so much play music as strafe the crowd with an ugly incandescence, mining the hardest, thorax-splitting sounds and most furious thoughts from the varied history of underground music.

Revving guitar samples (one taken straight from the Dead Kennedys) slam against a live beat so loose and mean it barely coheres, while Eaddy and the OGM come off equal parts subversive (Eaddy initially wears a fetching diaphanous dress), trouble-makers (almost no number goes without a roiling stage dive) and, goshdarnit, kinda endearing (OGM triumphantly discovers that the girl he’s been sexting is a pornstar. Awww.)

One of those gigs which begins with people running to escape, and takes off as the misfits surge in. Oh, the ho99o9, the ho99o9.

In three words: Revolution Number 9

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Peter Crawley

Peter Crawley

Peter Crawley, a contributor to The Irish Times, writes about theatre, television and other aspects of culture