The Homosexuals rose from ashes of the Rejects in 1978 London. Bruno Wizard with guitarist Anton Heyman, bassist Jim Welton and a laundry list of drummers accumulated a treasure trove of material throughout the late 70s and early 80s, shunning record company interest, only sporadically performing, and self-pressing small quantities of their own records. The band crumbled throughout their existence and has been largely dormant since 1984 until now. Bruno Wizard has assembled a cast of young NYC musicians to back him in America as the Homosexuals. Fresh off a string of headline making gigs at SXSW and throughout NYC, an autumn '08 tour, the band's first ever outing, gets underway on Halloween. They'll be supporting Love Guns, a 10" record out on Serious Business (11/11/08).

2008 US TOUR
Oct 31 2008
Brooklyn, New York
DanBro Brewery Warehouse - Todd P / Panache Halloween Party
Nov 1 2008
Medford, Massachusetts
Oxfam Cafe
Nov 2 2008
Danbury, Connecticut
Heirloom Arts Theatre
Nov 3 2008
Providence, Rhode Island
AS220
Nov 4 2008
Rochester, New York
The Bug Jar
Nov 5 2008
Cleveland, Ohio
Beachland Ballroom
Nov 6 2008
Chicago, Illinois
The Hideout
Nov 7 2008
Pontiac, Michigan
The Pike Room
Nov 8 2008
Columbus, Ohio
Cafe Bourbon Street
Nov 12 2008
Baltimore, Maryland
Talking Head w/ The Octagon
Nov 13 2008
Washington, DC, Washington DC
Velvet Lounge w/ Martin Bisi
Nov 14 2008
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Danger Danger Gallery w/ When Dino Ruled the Earth
Nov 15 2008
New York City, New York
Cake Shop w/ the Octagon

Educate yourself with this very thorough discography.

""Simply put, one of the most flawlessly great British punk/post-punk bands."
-WFMU

"The Homosexuals were, by all accounts, one of those late-1970s UK garage-punk bands that deserved to reach a wider audience alongside icons like the Sex Pistols, the Clash, and all the rest."
Marc Hogan, Pitchfork

-Pitchfork review of the Homosexuals CD: 8.4 - "Here today, gone tomorrow: Perusing Johan Kugelberg's list of 100 "best" DIY punk singles from the Ugly Things zine is a lesson in the fleeting bursts of creativity and desperation every collector of rare shit must wade through. I've never really been bitten by the collector bug personally, but have known enough people who have that it's become pretty easy for me to spot what they're looking for. Generally, bands that didn't last very long and put out records very few people heard (preferably self-pressed, and certainly vinyl- or cassette-only) find their way into collector hands almost as quickly as they disappeared. Sometimes, these folks uncover real hidden gems. For every few dozen of deservedly forgotten garage punk artistes, there's a band that could have been contenders in the world of the living had their luck been better. British trio The Homosexuals fit this bill, and I've a feeling that anyone into those hallowed days of apathy, art and the anti-social in the UK during the late 70s will be happy to know they existed.

The Homosexuals were a strange prospect. Seemingly, their music should fit into a similar spot as that of angry young men like Wire and Magazine who carried their penchants for art-school angst in the midst of proto-thug posturing, like badges of authentic alienation. And of course, in many ways, these bands were alienated-- at least from what had been passing for British rock prior to 1976. However, L'Voag (aka Jim, Amos, and now, Xentos), Anton (aka George Harassment) and Bruno were also part of a different scene, where more "progressive" notions of artistic protest were at stake: This Heat, Family Fodder and Chris Cutler's bands Henry Cow and the Art Bears were some of the names going at it in these circles.

So what and who were they? And where have they been for the last 25 years? The band actually formed in 1977, shortly after L'Voag noticed Bruno in protest at a National Front gathering/riot, while Anton answered an ad. After choosing a calculatedly provocative name, the three set about playing and recording a little on their own, and the following year, engineer Chris Gray (brother of producer Nigel Gray) brought them to Surrey Sound to record all of the music that ended up on the original Homosexuals' Record, and indeed, everything on this CD reissue. Their first release was the "Hearts in Exile"/"Soft South Africans" single, which was given extra collector life by its placement on Kugelberg's list (as was their seven-inch, "You're Not Moving the Way You're Supposed To", not contained on this album). The band released a couple of EPs from these sessions on Black Noise Records, as well as working on myriad solo projects before splitting in the early 80s.

The Homosexuals' split was no mere parting of ways, but a complete severing of ties. Bruno actually gave the tapes that became The Homosexuals' Record (reportedly from a cassette dub of masters he'd destroyed) to Cutler's ReR in 1984 without consulting the rest of the band. Before anyone could do anything about it, the record had been released and already gone out of print. Just like that, you get a lurid backstory, a flash of music, and fuzzy details over who did what to whom. Result: punk legend and collector fantasy. Today, L'Voag is the most musically active, having most recently released music as Xentos with Die Computer Trip Die-- though as with all things Homosexuals, specific details on the musicians are sketchy.

The music on The Homosexuals' CD is a sprawling bag of angular power-pop, quasi-dub, garage-punk and other stuff I'd liken to Faust or some such lunatic mob if I had to. In fact, I have a Homosexuals cover of Faust's "It's a Rainy Day Sunshine Girl" on CDR, which I still can't fit into this whole story. Suffice to say, were it not for the rudimentary production values, I'd say these guys would have given any of the big post-punk bands a run for their money in terms of both songwriting (the impact of these songs is almost impossible to deny) and sheer diversity.

This reissue doesn't collect everything The Homosexuals did, but it does emphasize what a great, fun, strange band they were. "Hearts in Exile" is the perfect punk love song, with a slow-building intro of slashed guitar and L'Voag's cryptic description of "bloodshot eyes/ Appetizing, isolation.../ The messages of radio," his voice coming and going and bathed in reverb; it's all very hard to pin down, as if the song might suddenly fade out into nothing at any moment. And then comes the hook, featuring a four-note, pleading guitar riff that conveys heartbreak masked by aggression perfectly. Even better is the punchy, ambitious "Astral Glamour" (also the name of a pending three-disc set planned by Chuck Warner's Hyped to Death label later this year), a shiny piece of power-pop that would sound as good coming from early XTC as it would have on The Who's Sell Out. Nonsensical lyrics ("Astral glamour semen in the region") barely hide the infectious, incredibly concise strains. By all rights, this should have been a hit, as should either version of "Soft South Africans" contained here.

Elsewhere, The Homosexuals ram out tunes with speed-of-light abandon. "My Night Out", "Technique Street", "Vociferous Slam" and "A Million Keys" all clock in at less than two minutes and are explosive bits of jagged post-punk along the lines of Gang of Four. However, L'Voag is a much more overtly passionate vocalist, going for broke on pretty much everything. He bleats lines like, "Lovers licking labia seem satisfied, satisfied," as if shouting over a mad crowd of sweaty admirers and psychopaths. "Divorce Proceedings from Reality" and "Neutron Lover" proceed with similar zeal, but with the immediacy of great, sparkling pop. A far cry removed are tracks like "All About Cheap" (the DIY aesthetic defined) and "Mecho Madness", using the limited studio technology at their disposal to construct strange, damaged art pieces reminiscent of concurrent Pere Ubu.

The worst part about a release like this is that if you want more, you're virtually out of luck. The remaining Homosexuals material is all from the same period (excepting an EP recorded after L'Voag left the band), but if you want to find out "what happened next," you'll have to search the various long-gone solo projects including Amos & Sara, George Harassment, Sara Goes Pop, and Nancy Sesay & The Melodaires. Warner's set should take care of some of that, but there are still holes in their official discography. However, now that there's a legit (and presumably well-distributed) CD issue of The Homosexuals' music, I bet their legacy gets a boost. The music speaks volumes for itself."
-PITCHFORK: Dominique Leone, January 22, 2004

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Pitchfork review of the Astral Glamour 3CD Box Set: 8.0
"As cultural constructs such as "punk" traverse the dimming corridor of history, they're revised in unfathomable ways. Temporal distance hews away their ambiguities until they fall into orderly, narrative rank and file. In our collective memory of historical events, some players are canonized, others are diminished, and the process that separates them often seems arbitrary. With punk rock, this process of selective forgetting has at least one discernible component-- the most heralded old punk bands are the ones that mainstream rock critics ordained as the movement's standard-bearers. Most of us remember The Sex Pistols, The Clash, X, The Germs, The Ramones, Wire, The Fall, and Black Flag. But how many remember Crime? What about The Adverts? What about The Homosexuals?

"Perhaps The Homosexuals, who evolved from a band called The Rejects, were never in the right place at the right time. But this seems unlikely, considering that The Rejects were opening The Roxy for The Damned, The Jam and Wire in the late '70s, which is pretty prime in terms of the punk zeitgeist. Perhaps their name scared away cultural dilettantes slumming for a more mannered radical idiom, but this is also improbable: The Sex Pistols didn't seem to have much trouble cementing their legacy. Perhaps The Ramones' tri-chord sing-alongs were just more memorable than The Homosexuals' adventurous, eclectic song structures (and "Gabba gabba hey" does stick in the brain a bit more than "Ivory elbows/ Deny shads edge"). Nevertheless, in our current climate of rampant historical salvaging, it seems likely that every shooting star in the fleeting firestorm that was punk will be plucked from the obscuring swarm and bronzed for posterity. The Homosexuals are the latest to come (back) down the pike, clothed in new fire: reissued, remastered, repackaged, and finally, remembered.

"The triple-disc Astral Glamour clocks in at a whopping 81 tracks, and documents every salvageable mote of music The Homosexuals committed to tape or vinyl from 1977 to 1984, including multiple versions of many tracks (guitar mixes, vocal mixes, live versions, instrumentals). Most of the first disc's songs appeared on the posthumous 1984 Homosexuals LP and The Homosexuals' CD reissue that was released earlier this year. So it's the second and third discs that will get exhaustive collectors all hot and bothered-- they're brimming with tracks restored from decaying LPs and an ultra-rare tape of which 10 known copies exist, plus demos, singles, unreleased tracks and alternate versions unavailable anywhere else. Handsomely packaged in a gate-fold case with a 32-page booklet of photos, posters, lyrics, and commentary, Astral Glamour might be the collection by which the best punk band that no one heard finally get their due.

"The Homosexuals epitomize the British post-punk style of the late '70s (why didn't Rough Trade pick this up?), combining the brainy word collages and winding guitars of Scritti Politti with the manic energy and bizarre flourishes of The Pop Group. Even remastered, Astral Glamour raises shitty production to an artform, and the tinny guitars one associates with old punk records achieve effects of depth, texture and distortion that are startling. But what really distinguishes The Homosexuals from their numerous peers is the remarkable diversity of their output, which maintains its vigor and cohesive mien while exploring different methods of construction and tone: ramshackle pop, mangled dub, rock shredding, garage funk, Afrobeat, and gutter psychedelia.

"My Night Out" blasts off with chaotic guitars and babbling, affected vocals reminiscent of The Pop Group's "We Are All Prostitutes", before collapsing into a streamlined pop/punk anthem. The title track evokes Entertainment!-era Gang of Four, with its melodic bass licks and trash-funk guitars. "Hearts in Exile" has a squalid grandeur as it moves in and out of the speakers, a ghostly, vanishing version of the Psychedelic Furs' sweeping paranoia. "You're Not Moving the Way You're Supposed To" reworks New Age Steppers-style ragga-punk with plinking harmonics and euphoric rock breakdowns. The twinkling piano and amorphous atmosphere of "Nursery Chymes" predict The Walkmen 25 years before their advent, just as "In Search of the Perfect Baby" seems to auger the disturbed and dilapidated opulence of Frog Eyes. The complete songs are strung together with wispy motes of ephemera, such as the fractured dub of "Symbols I Love" or the electric stutter and flux of "Black Noise", which rolls into the twangy, laddering funk of "Ants on Parade". Taken alone, any song on Astral Glamour is engaging. Taken together, in all their multiplicity and ambition, they cohere into a monstrous and shambling mutant before which one just collapses slack-jawed and cowers.

"As David Berman put it, "Punk rock died when the first kid said/ 'Punk's not dead.'" Maybe so, but as limb after limb is plucked from the wreckage, it's leaving behind one exquisite corpse. The three-plus hours of material ranging over Astral Glamour unites The Homosexuals' fragmentary oeuvre to reveal them as punk visionaries who were at least as questing, untamed, and ultimately listenable as any of their more renowned contemporaries. This is the sound of history revising itself toward perfection."

-PITCHFORK: Brian Howe, August 18, 2004

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"SXSW: The Homosexuals Provide the Festival Highlight
"AUSTIN March 2008 - I just had the closest thing to a religious experience since my bar mitzvah.

"The Homosexuals played the most dynamic, explosive set I've seen in a couple years. For the half hour immediately following their set at Spiro's all I could think to myself was, "Holy (expletive), I cannot believe I just saw that!"

"Before you think this is some kind of joke, it's not. The Homosexuals are a real band, albeit one without a very Google-friendly name. But that wasn't really a concern when the trio formed in the U.K. in the 1970s. Over the course of a couple years the band released a handful of spiky, DIY, post-punk singles that were eventually collected onto something called "The Homosexuals Record." That record is one of the greatest records ever. No doubt, no debate, 100% great.

"Free-form radio station WFMU, which sponsored this showcase, put it best when describing the band on its consistently awesome blog: "Crammed with more ideas in a song than most bands deliver in a discography, the Homosexuals were the collision point of urgent punk attack, sideways pop hooks, dub dementia and literally anything else that might exist in a British kitchen at the time."

"The songs zigged and zagged, abruptly shifted tempos and employed "random snippets of sound" while always maintaining a pop base. The band imploded without making any real impact except on a handful of record collectors and the album (and its eventual re-release on CD) became one of those rare lost classics that was more classic than lost.

"Principal songwriter Bruno Wizard has been back on the radar recently, playing a handful of one-off shows in New York and dabbling in electronic-based new music. My expectations were low going in, but there was absolutely no chance I was going to miss the Homosexuals.

"Bruno was backed by a four-piece band from New York, Apache Beat, (and the Unsacred Hearts -SBR) and older frontmen looking to recreate glories should use his approach. Find some young superfans who can probably play the songs better than the original members ever could and let their youthful energy be a driving force. It didn't take long to realize this was going to work out beautifully. They launched into "Hearts in Exile," a slow-building, dubbed-out gem from "The Homosexuals Record," and it sounded perfect. The band was locked in, the 57-year-old Wizard had the energy and voice of a man half his age and, simply put, it just killed.

"Wizard, wearing a Batboy tank-top and looking like a skinnier, gaunter version of Jeremy Irons, babbled semi-coherently between songs but was all business when performing. He sashayed across the stage, throwing his arms out for emphasis during certain lines. As for the set list, it was "hit" after "hit" - "Soft South Africans," then "Neutron Lover," then "Walk Before Imitate," then "False Sentiments." These titles probably mean nothing to you but they are all 5-stars in my iTunes, songs I never dreamed of hearing played live, let alone with all the vitality of the original recordings.

"Not enough can be said of the job Apache Beat did. The band hit every cue, not missing a single note. They let Bruno (deservedly) have the spotlight but still made it feel like we were watching a band, not just a dude and some hired hands.

"I rarely bop around at shows - after all, I am white - and I especially avoid it when I'm ostensibly working. But there was no containing myself on this night. Jumping, fist-pumping, singing along, "Woo!"-ing. I broke out the entire arsenal for this occasion.

"When the band wrapped up its half-hour set with a jarring version of "You're Not Moving the Way You're Supposed To," I just stood there in awe. I went up to some random person who I noticed was also jumping around for most of the set and said, "Oh my god!" I just needed to share this moment with someone who was feeling the same thing. We exchanged a few gleeful "Oh my gods!" and "Did we really just see thats?!" before going our separate ways.

"I stayed at the venue for another four hours, partly because WFMU put together a killer lineup (including underground heroes Half Japanese) but also because I just felt the need to stay in the space where I'djust witnessed that performance. It was that great."
-David Malitz - The Washington Post

"The iconic post-punk act is back with a vengence, ready to mash it up stateside. Promoting the new EP, "Love Guns," the band's live show is among the best in the business."
Metro Mix, Baltimore

"If the Homosexuals were on a bill with the Kinks during the British Invasion, they may have turned a few heads with their name and their aggressive sound, but they wouldn't have been entirely out of place. Their fuzzed-out guitars and snotty vocals have earned them labels such as pre-post-punk (huh?), and their subtly experimental instrumentation has garnered comparisons to Wire and mid-period Clash, but the trio's unapologetically pop "oohs" and "aahs" — and their affinity for blues riffs, pianos, and mandolins — might put a geriatric Ray Davies at ease. You might call the 30-year-old band proto-pre-Brit-pop-punk, but then frontman Bruno Wizard would have to smack you (and he would)."
– Gerry Mak, Flavorpill

"This band was the HIGHLIGHT of last year's SXSW"
Sailor Jerry

"The Homosexuals – who have been a major influence on many young bands such as The Black Lips and Deerhunter – have been throwing down mayhem and have marched to a beat all their own since being formed by eccentric frontman Bruno Wizard in the mid-70’s. No matter how you talk about The Homosexuals' live show, it's almost always going to lessen the value of the real experience. They throw together "well-constructed Brit-punk — early-Buzzcocks-meets-Vibrators — with more intelligence and sense than blind aggression," as Trouser Press proclaimed."
Vinyl District


The Homosexuals play "Neutron Lover": SXSW 2008. The Beauty Bar.


The Homosexuals play "Hearts in Exile" live at Union Hall, Brooklyn NY 8/22/08.


The Homosexuals play "Soft South Africans" live at Union Hall, Brooklyn NY 8/22/08.


Bruno Wizard talks to the BBC's Tom Robinson at SXSW 2008


Bruno Wizard is a human canvas when the Homosexuals play Rubulad in late 2007.


The Homosexuals play "Soft South Africans" at Santos Party House, NYC 7/21/08

"
The Homosexuals play "Walk Before Imitate" at the Knitting Factory NYC 5/11/08