Gum Takes Tooth & KeyMPi Live at Schokoladen Berlin

As GUM TAKES TOOTH, the duo of Thomas Fug and Jussi Brightmore plot an adventurous, idiosyncratic and willfully unpredictable trajectory. Continuously exploring and mutating with an ever more nuanced approach while maintaining a staunch commitment to non-conformity, the band formed in East London in 2009 with wild gigs across the East London underground music and art scene. Early material coalesced primitive DIY Silver Apples electronics, blast beat mayhem, and experimental noise with explosive avant-punk energy. Now marrying an unflinching beat-driven assault to a questing and transformative vision, their fourth album RECOVERY POSITION (2023) represents a clean slate for Gum Takes Tooth at a time when this ever shifting and morphing entity sheds its skin once again, revealing a lean, formidable and precise new form. Recalibrating their signature enmeshing of drums and electronics they landed on a propulsive all-electronic delivery that stubbornly eschews genre constraints while maintaining the duo’s clear affinity for the rattle and rumble of bass bins under duress. Thus was birthed a unique amalgam of industrial grime aerobics, sci-fi mutant 808 protest music and hands-in-the-air rave bangers. The album documents the tumultuous years of personal and worldwide upheaval since its predecessor. Yet the duo have alchemically transcended their circumstances, channelling the personal and political into salvation. True to form, what’s emerged is their most singular and potent work to date, simultaneously their most pop-adjacent and their most extreme. KEYMPI, who have been collaborating with each other for the past 10 years in several projects ranging from long experimental feature films - selected and awarded prizes in film festivals around the globe-, a series of live cabaret shows, independent music radio programmes and music production, experimental fashion proposals, folklore research and currently they are uniting forces once again for a music project intended to enhance our individual trajectories and push the boundaries of the sound we collectively revere.