Bang Bang Machine - Geek Love (1992)

Bang Bang Machine were a cult indie band from Evesham, Worcestershire in England, who were formed in 1989 by guitarist Steve Eagles, Lamp on drums, Stan Lee on bass, and enigmatic vocalist Elizabeth Freeth. The group experimented with different styles of music, and so the media found them hard to categorise, as they could covered alternative rock, Goth, pop, ambient and dance over just a few songs, and although they were sometimes classed as a Shoegaze band, musically they fell more between the Britpop and Grunge camps. Their most famous song, 'Geek Love', was released on their own Jimmi Kidd Rekordz label in 1989, and was inspired by the book by Katherine Dunn about a family of freaks in a travelling circus, and uses audio samples from the controversial Tod Browning film 'Freaks'. The single was championed by John Peel as a perfect example of a band self-financing their debut single, and were invited to record a session for his show in 1992. They were known for creating moving songs about unusual topics, and their song '16 Years' was about the Stefan Kiszko case, where an innocent man was jailed for a crime he did not commit. Their first two EPs from 1991 and 1992 contained a total of seven songs, including the lengthy 'Geek Love', and they could easily have issued them as their debut album rather than splitting them into two separate releases, so this bringing together of all the tracks from those EPs is what that album could have sounded like. 

Track listing

01 Geek Love (from 'The 'Geek' EP' 1991)
02 Flower Horse (from 'The 'Geek' EP' 1991)
03 The Fuck Machine (from 'The 'Geek' EP' 1991)
04 Lovely Lily (from the 'Evil Circus E.P.' 1992)
05 16 Years (from the 'Evil Circus E.P.' 1992)
06 Red Sun (from the 'Evil Circus E.P.' 1992)
07 Jane Says (from the 'Evil Circus E.P.' 1992)