Brudenell date for inventive Boy Azooga

Boy Azooga, the shape-shifting musical mystery tour piloted by Cardiff's Davey Newington, are heading our way with a gig in Leeds this month.
Boy Azooga.Boy Azooga.
Boy Azooga.

The band have a good year so far with their debut album coming out on Heavenly and a live slot on Jools Holland’s Later programme on the BBC.

They have just shared ‘Waitin’, the latest track to be taken from their album, ‘1,2 Kung Fu!’, which was released earlier this year to much acclaim.

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Speaking on the song, Davey explained: “This is a song for my girlfriend.

“It was really inspired by the Futurama episode ‘Jurassic Bark’. It’s a heartfelt episode where Fry’s dog waits till the day he dies for Fry to return to him.

“The drumming is a mixture of me ripping off Kraftwerk, Caribou and Can as the song progresses, flipping from drum machines to acoustic drums.

Announcing themselves to the world with the elastic-funk, Onyeabor-inspired ‘Face Behind Her Cigarette’ in November last year, which quickly became a fixture on the 6Music and Radio 1 playlists and also caught the attention of Mike D, of the Beastie Boys, who interviewed Davey for his Beats 1 show, the band’s following releases ‘Loner Boogie’ and ‘Jerry’ saw them bag A lists at 6Music.

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A prodigious musical talent, Davey Newington is a young man with a rich musical heritage. One of his granddads was a jazzer who played drums for the Royal Marines. Davey’s dad (violin) and his mum (clarinet) both played, and met, in the BBC National Orchestra Of Wales.

Davey himself took up drums at the age of six and also enjoyed orchestral engagement, playing in various Welsh orchestras and jazz bands as a teenager as well at latterly finding gainful employment playing drums as part of Charlotte Church’s Late Night Pop Dungeon.

Inspired by his art teacher at school who sent him off to town to buy Can’s Ege Bamyasi, taking musical cues from the likes of Sly & The Family Stone, Caribou, Black Sabbath, Outkast, Van McCoy, Ty Segall and The Beastie Boys and with arrangements which carry the wonky tunefulness of The Super Furry Animals they nabbed their name from the 1994 film The Little Rascals.

Davey recruited friends Daf Davies, Dylan Morgan and Sam Barnes to form the Boy Azooga live quartet, an ensemble that swings smoothly from filmic instrumentals to a churning, rave-tinged rock that hints at both Can and their progeny, the Happy Mondays and the band recently played a run of shows with The Magic Gang. They also made a much-talked-about appearance at this year’s Heavenly Weekender at the Trades Club in Hebden Bridge, have sold out their most recent own shows in London and Cardiff and most recently wowed festival audiences at Latitude, Port Eliot and Green Man amongst others.

They continue to take loose-limbed live show on the road throughout the autumn and will be appearing at the Brudenell Social Club on Sunday, October 14.

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