Hello! We are a 15-headed conflagration of instrumentalists, vocalists and composers, specialising in turbo-folk mélanges of Gypsy, Balkan, Klesmer and beat poetry. We put on a riotous uplifting show, and get audiences really going– jumping around and that sort of thing. Yeah! We also stimulate minds with plenty of musical intricacy and intriguing smatterings of subject matters most bands don’t sing about.
Our motto is “If you can hold your head high and keep your ear to the ground whilst keeping your eye on the ball and your nose to the grindstone, you’re more flexible than us”
Please explore the videos, photos, sound clips and reviews on here – they should give you an idea of how we sound and look. But you’ll never really know what a live Destroyers experience is until you come see it!
Brief history of the band
History depends on who you ask. My own experience started a bit like a geologist with a seismograph; I detected subtle indications of something vast and irresistibly powerful brewing deep under the ground. Another way to put it is that my flute playing friend Max said to me “the guys at Speedwell Road are thinking of starting up a band to play Eastern European Folk Music”. He said this to me on many occasions despite a shortage of corroborating evidence for such musical activities.
Then one sunny day back when I used to live on Eastwood Road, I was merrily pruning my lemon balm when who should come cycling round the bend, swerving dangerously around erratically parked cars, fiddle case hanging precariously off one shoulder, but our very own Louis. He wanted me to play some tunes he’d dug out, including the one that goes de da derrrrrrrr, ba de da derrrrrrrr ba de da, derrrrrrrr, ba ba bom (answers on a postcard). In those days, some musicians were running an unofficial venue in their basement. This smelly jazz hole was colourfully decorated with graffiti, but wasn’t designed for so many people; on a busy night the air vent would struggle, we’d all be breathing fourth-hand air and condensed sweat would drip from the low ceiling. We must have sounded pretty bad but the germ of what still enthuses me about the band was already growing. It was an exciting sound that made people happy in a raucous and benevolently belligerent way. At one of our early gigs in aforementioned basement the normally docile and sophisticated audience began cheering so loud the P.A. was drowned out, so we began cheering back. The tune we had intended to play collapsed into an uncontrolled crescendo of unanimous vocal exuberance which seemed to last several minutes.
Like a ball of lava slowly crystallising into a hospitable planet, our line-up started to take shape and we started approaching a situation where we could even play a whole gig without extreme musical catastrophe. At this stage we were mostly learning traditional tunes from Romania, Serbia and Bulgaria, and shamelessly but inexpertly trying to copy from bands such as Taraf De Haidouks and Fanfare Ciocarlia. But our sound and influences soon widened with the addition of legendary firebrand lyricist and vocalist Paul Murphy, and as we started to compose new material and incorporate tunes and musical influences from other parts of the world. There are a great abundance of us in this band and as individuals we all have our fingers in many different kinds of music; we conjure a burgeoning panoply of multifarious congruence and juxtaposition, hyperbole and candor, poignance and glee.
During this process of fermentation our style and nature became less easily or adequately classifiable and we became increasingly confident in its own intrinsic nature and potential. Our diverse palette still held gypsy folk music and klezmer right at its centre, and we held onto and developed the initial seed of anarchic jubilation and preposterous rambunctiousness that I think I mentioned earlier. One of the great things about it is the way it makes people smile – you should see the sight from onstage when we get to the bit of Sirba which modulates to the major and a thousand people all reflect the energy back to us on their beaming faces and in their movement.
In the time since then we’ve played at festivals, town halls, pubs, clubs, weddings, bar mitzvahs, universities, private parties, public parties, community centres, the world’s oldest surviving music hall, the world’s oldest surviving piece of monumental railway architecture, and the childrens’ play area of the Birkenhead to Belfast ferry. We’ve played as the sun went down and as it rose. We’ve played gigs so muddy that our instrument cases still haven’t come clean. We’ve dealt with security so arsey we had to fight to get on stage. We’ve played at functions so opulent that they have chariot racing and aerial spitfire displays. We’ve played without drummer or drum kit by miking the floor and getting our accordion player to stomp his feet. We’ve played without our clarinet player because he fell asleep in a festival toilet. We’ve got sit-down daytime audiences off their bums and dancing, and united diverse demographics of audience in the enjoyment of our tunes, lyrics, grooves and basslines. We’ve collaborated with samba bands, rappers, dhol groups, gamelan ensembles and educational projects. We’ve written and performed scores for silent movies and staged a musical about a magic bird of peace whose sweet song echoes through the forest. We’ve been married twice, arrested twice, and had six babies (not with each other). We’ve uplifted the spirits of the populace at large.
And it ain’t over yet sunshine