BIOGRAPHY
Minus IQ may be a tight, energetic and highly melodic fourpiece who are rapidly building a devoted following on the London live scene but it wasn’t ever thus…Twenty year old lead singer and devoted synth fanatic Charlie and 19 year old drummer Jake first made music together at the tender age of nine. Risking the wrath of the good Doctor himself, they controversially dubbed their collaboration K9 but the pressures of impending fame led to an acrimonious implosion and tragically no surviving recordings of their apparently groundbreaking music remains.
Thankfully the two lads met again some six years later when, differences buried, they shook hands and the strange and wonderful creature they christened Minus IQ was born. ‘I saw this drunk bloke singing to himself in a queue for a gig and realised it was Charlie,’ explains Jake, ‘Justin, Michael and I were desperate to find a singer so I invited him to audition.’ Needless to say Charlie’s unique vocal skills impressed everyone and from that moment on the band were inseparable.
Consisting of four lively London lads born and bred in Barnet MinusIQ all went to the same school where they discovered that they shared a passion for music. It didn’t take long for their violins, French horns and pianos to be replaced by guitars, bass, synths and drums and there first big break arrived in 2006, when in return for free drumming lessons Jake blagged the band a garage to rehearse in. Minus IQ shunned daylight and spent seven days a week writing, rehearsing and refining their craft, surrounded by posters of Muse and the Killers and fuelled by strong coffee and Pot Noodle. ‘We went in the garage as kids in a punk pop covers band,’ explains electronica obsessed guitarist Michael ‘and emerged as grown men with forty of our own songs.’ With uni places beckoning beguilingly, the feisty foursome stuck eight fingers up at Academia and decided that the road of rock ’n roll was the one worth travelling. They can now regularly be spotted schmoozing, boozing and cruising round Camden’s fleshpots and nightspots.
Their sound is an enthralling mix of Rock and Electro, Dance and Indie. Their look is 80s with thin ties and glittery stuff and their songs explore the eternal appeal of sex, girls, partying and drama. Their single Ultraviolet amply illustrates all of the above and is out as a free download single at the start of July. You would have to be in possession of a very low IQ indeed not to like it!
Piers Hernu, Mail on Sunday
Booking Enquiries - [email protected]
Press Contact - Firgas Esack: [email protected]
Label Contact - Olivier Behzadi: [email protected]
Online Contact - Neil Cartwright: [email protected]