Sister Chain & Brother John

The duo Sister Chain & Brother John formed in July 2005 when Berlin-based singer Sister Chain (Skin Blues, Spinster Sister) and Brother John Higgins (musical producer and former frontman of the London band Val's Basement) met in a mysterious bookshop.
Since that chance meeting, they have played over 250 concerts in churches, on boats, on street corners in war zones as well as the usual nightclubs, festivals and concert halls, looking like Victorian gentlefolk and wielding nothing but a distorted bass guitar and a tambourine.
In 2008 they released their debut album "Darkness to Warm Your Heart" and toured Denmark, Norway, Germany, UK, The Czech Republic and Israel. The album which mused upon the wicked set and the lovelorn; teenage daydreams and erotic nightmares, painters, vampires, and their mutual pursuits, was warmly received by the critics and established the band's position as Parlour-Punk Pioneers.
The duo's second album "The Androgyne Show" will be out in October 2011. It is a joint release of their home label "Dwarfhaus" and the Danish record company SOUND OF PERPETUAL ASTONISHMENT (SOPA). It will be distributed in Scandinavia by Rillbar and in the rest of Europe by PALE MUSIC INT.
This time around Sister Chain & Brother John have taken their concept one step further – or perhaps back: like "Darkness", the Androgyne is recorded on 4 track tape and pressed as vinyl only, only now the complete production is purely analogue: including the mastering and the cover photo – taken by an 1860's camera and developed with cyanide on glass plates.
THE ANDROGYNE SHOW is a concept album of the Ziggy Stardust tradition, including the blurred sexuality and aliens subject matter. The title song, for instance, is a theme song of an imaginary game show in which the winners gain a sex change operation while the losers are sold to slavery. However, the parlour motif is not abandoned, and is present in piano tracks like THE LAST ROOM - the song of the betrayed duchess, or the sonnet song MODERN LOVE – a tribute to both poet George Meredith and the composer Beethoven.



Apart from the lonesome piano and the occasional circus drum, Sister Chain & Brother John, remain faithful to the minimalist principals: one bass guitar OR electric guitar, vocals and effects. But what else does one need in the nineteenth century in outer space?