On the San Francisco via Aachen, Germany band’s Myspace, Horrid Red cites a sizable lot of avant-punk, kraut, and industrial acts as influences: from Cabaret Voltaire to The Savage Republic to the Fall to PIL to Can. And while those influences can all be heard loud and clear on Celestial Joy, the omission of Joy Division, New Order, or even The Cure among them is confusing, since those bands immediately come to mind. Shit, the set’s title track could pass for a Joy Division tribute band from Berlin.Celestial Joy is a wholly enjoyable, barely poppy, and somewhat horrifying trip into a world of low fidelity, danceable darkness. It’s your entire dusty, goth/art-rock record collection cued onto a shitty boombox and told to all play at once, Zaireeka style–with a dude yelling atop it all in German
