Biography

Formed during the salad years of the new century, THE HOUDINI BOX were brought together 'under the influence' of Edinburgh singer/songwriter Lynsey Hutchinson, a familiar act around the acoustic dens of the city's Old Town district.

Grown indolent from a lifelong affair with the drowsy poppy and released prematurely from the Pegg-Arkham Institute for the Musically Insane, Ms. Hutchinson began harnessing the mysterious power of electricity for her 6-string instrument via a hermetically sealed, pedal-operated box, and rigorously training her voice to the mediocre standard of 3rd Dan Cacophonous Harpy. Firstly enlisting the bass playing abilities of South of the Queensferry dweller, Mr. Norman Lamont Esq. a talented performer shunned from the local music halls for his 'questionable intentions' for the key of Am.

Lamont had received some notoriety during the 'naughty noughties' with his combo Norman Lamont and the Innocents (for which, Hutchinson had been playing regularly as bassist and object of mockery). Due to a pre-school injury from a Jezail bullet - which still gives him occasional trouble when the weather turns - Lamont cannot play in the tempo of 6/4.

The band line up was subsequently improved by oboe player and refugee from the new world, Valerie Densmore. Fraudulent anatomist and founder of the Church of Scientificality, Ms. Densmore is still sought by the authorities in several eastern European countries for her (alleged) illegal experimentation on lycanthropes.

The next member to this aberrant collective was 12-string acousticator Master Sam Barber. Often delusional and confused from his formative years as an apothecary test subject, young Barber persists in his belief that he is, in fact, the marooned crewman of a fantastical star-born vessel known as 'Enterprise'. An outlandish fabrication, nevertheless encouraged by his band mates.

The final addition came in the formless er, form of ex-sideshow exhibit 'the Groovy Torso'. Having lost all of his arms and legs in an ill-advised bare-knuckle fight with a drunken bear in disreputable Gullane tavern the Dog and Triffid, drummer Ross Galloway now performs his percussive thrashing with the aid of prosthetic limbs made from ham and powered by an elaborate system of cogs, pulleys and arcane application.

With the line-up complete, and all charges dropped THE HOUDINI BOX bring you their special brand of rock n' ghoul. Leaning their musical styling towards a (con)fusion of the works of Dr. Joby Talbot and the Divine Comedy, acoustic pioneer Nick Harper, and metal mathematicians Tool.

Witness them live now, before their inevitable decline into addled excess and 10 minute oboe solos. Thus securing you the future opportunity to proclaim in a self-satisfied manner that you 'saw them when they were good'