Pram
Pram at The Pound Arts Centre, Corsham
About the show
Pram formed in the late 80s with a sound that ranges from exotica, Krautrock and the forgotten film soundtracks. Over the years Pram have expanded their ideas to encompass disorientating shifts in mood, with their new material seeing the band build on their distinctive soundscape with added textures and a raw, powerful live show careering from eerie to bone-shaking
Pram are essentially a product of the post-punk late 80s, inspired by the likes of The Raincoats and The Slits and contemporaries of Stereolab and Broadcast. Pram have always sounded like they make up their own rules, including an inventively open approach to rhythm and timing. And their use of theremin and the manipulation of instruments also adds a certain harmonic wooziness.
The band still use a bewildering array of instruments and are unrepentantly unfazed by the possibilities of performing on anything and everything that seems appropriate. “It’s not possible to develop a facility on every instrument we want to use” explains founder member and multi-instrumentalist Sam Owen, “so we simply don’t worry about it and look instead for the initial thrill of discovering a new sound”. The addition of mountain dulcimer and trombonist/theremin player Harry Dawes’ sometimes playful, occasionally mournful soprano saxophone are a testament to this continued experimentation in the new set.
Featuring - Pram
A band whose name perfectly sums up their aesthetic, Birmingham, England's Pram create evocative - and very British - electronic pop that's equally childlike and sophisticated, unsettling, and quaint. As inspired by children's television and animation as the experiments of Can, Faust, The Raincoats, Alice Coltrane and The Residents, the band's vision was clear from the start. On early albums such as Helium (1994) and the following year's Sargasso Sea, they textured odd melodies and hypnotic beats with toy pianos, triangles, glockenspiels, glass hammers, and even a Hawaiian bubble machine.