Matthew Williams swapped a sombre Sunday for a slice of Shaku and filed in with their fans to see the band receive a hero’s welcome for their album launch.

Leeds based six-piece Shaku have been turning heads in the local music scene with their astonishing live performances since forming in 2017. The band are the self-proclaimed forerunners of a genre they define as “Frog Rock”, melding elements of Jazz Fusion, Funk and Prog Rock, with flavours of Hip Hop and Blues, all whilst retaining a tongue-in-cheek sense of humour. Despite such a varied combination of styles, the band pull it off with ease.

To celebrate the release of their debut album Maku, Shaku played Brudenell Social Club along with help from fellow Leeds based band Lady and Mancunian seven-piece, the Bethlehem Casuals. I caught Shaku playing in Hyde Park Book Club last year, so I knew what I was expecting with them, but for the support bands I was going in blind, and it’s worth highlighting how genuinely baffled I was by how good they were. Lady seamlessly mixed Folk, Psych, Indie and Jazz to create a hazy dream pop sound spearheaded by singer Becky’s angelic vocals.

As for the Bethlehem Casuals, they absolutely blew my mind, again mixing countless unorthodox genres and styles, and again pulling it off in spades. The band somehow mixed saxophones, cellos, synths and funk bass lines, all with an anarchic punk rock attitude, to create a boundless, insanely complexed yet groovy sound that they claim is “music Jesus would listen to”. It was like Mr. Bungle doing a Funkadelic tribute concert.

Shaku were greeted with a hero’s welcome as they crept onto the stage in black druid robes to the sounds of ‘The Ecstasy of Gold’ in Metallica-esque fashion. The whole performance was a just such a joyous celebration of music, with blistering guitar shredding, funky rhythms, and genre-jumping madness, proving why they are one of the best up and coming bands in Leeds at the moment.

MATTHEW WILLIAMS

[Image Credit: Leeds Inspired]