Merging a fevered imagination, solid songwriting abilities and a groovy showbiz attitude with a mad scientist’s brain for weird gadgets, Thomas Truax is a true one-off. He travels the world delighting audiences with his evolving ‘band’ of surreal self-made, Harry Partch-esque instruments including a motorised drum machine made of bike wheels called ‘Mother Superior’ and a souped up Dr Seuss-ian Gramophone called ‘The Hornicator’, as well as guitar.

Uncut says ‘Truax is shaping up nicely as one of the great rock eccentrics’ while Splendid magazine called him ‘one of the five or ten best singer/songwriters in the world that you’ve never heard of… an exceptional talent, unique and resistant to comparison.’

He cr…afts rich, poetically evocative songs about insects, trees, technology, and a lifelong obsession with things lunar, including various reasons Why Dogs Howl at The Moon. His eight studio LPs include the highly rated covers album Songs From The Films Of David Lynch. Notable supporters and collaborators include Jarvis Cocker, Duke Special, Richard Hawley, The Dresden Dolls and the late author Terry Pratchett.

A new single, Save Me, featuring Gemma Ray, is scheduled for release in September, and a new full-length album will follow soon after. A collaboration with Leeds band Post War Glamour Girls is also set to be released this autumn.

‘Enthralling, mind-blowingly original and totally bonkers… a creative circus of the wonderfully surreal’ – Brighton Noise

‘When he performs, it is a spectacle – the originality and seeming impossibility of what he does is much of the appeal’ – The Guardian

‘His gigs are extraordinary, fizzing with showmanship’ – Q

Main support comes from Farm Hand. Since 2016 Farm Hand has been the solo name of Islet member, Shape Records and From Now On Festival founder Mark Daman Thomas. Farm Hand is an instinctual musical force with a love of expressive live performance. International Dreams is his debut solo album and the sound of him being restored to factory settings, after moving from Cardiff to his homeland in the sparsely populated hills of Mid Wales. It is his reflection on the realities of rural life, built on car boot beats, field recordings, loops and second-hand organs. Freewheeling and full of deep, cyclical melodies, the album was recorded in a barn studio on the working family farm of Pontvane, Radnorshire, in spring 2017 with producer Rob Jones (Sweet Baboo, Slow Club). International Dreams is out via Shape Records on 3 November 2017.

Opening the show is Cynthia’s Periscope. Manchester-based Aberdonian Paul Morrice has been performing under the guise Cynthia’s Periscope since the summer of 2014. His music varies from the melodic and sentimental to the brutal and cathartic, drawing inspiration from sources as varied as Robert Wyatt, Four Tet, Tunng and Arab Strap.

Price: £8 adv
Info/tickets: http://www.heymanchester.com/thomas-truax-2