Unio And Petitio: Blog Of Funk Recommended

Here is a real find. Two geniuses masquerading as comedians. Or is it the other way round?

Lurking in MySpace under the tag, Melodramatic Popular Song / Alternative / Other and bandying the phrase “whelk om” Unio And Petitio sound something like a cross between The Residents, Ivor Cutler, and Julian Cope in his LSD dementia years – which is description that barely does them justice. It’s like the best songs you never heard as a child; it’s a horror film which you kind of wish you hadn’t stayed up to watch, but cannot tear yourself away from; and as your eyes get tired and sore, and you begin to write off the following day, you watch ever more engrossed in plot twists which darken, special effects which confuse, and advertising breaks which remind you that the real world is even odder.

Tenderly executed and yet teetering on utter unreliability, the music appeals to both the aesthete and the chortler, simultaneously bizarre, playful, authentic, so left field it comes back in at you from underneath, and yet, by some divine provenance, beautifully, touchingly musical.

The influences cited are: beer, insects, heat, gasses, electricity, doorbells and magnets. For the unitiated, I recommend in particular the track, “a balm on yer”.