SCISSORGUN:

Scissorgun are a two-piece soundscape project from Manchester, UK, comprising Alan Hempsall (Crispy Ambulance) on treated guitars, vocals, prose and trumpet, and David Clarkson (formerly of Illuminati) on synths, keyboards, drum programming, rhythms and percussion.

The duo came together in the summer of 2016 with a view to creating spontaneous music and by November had laid the foundations of Assault Two, their debut release, so named because it is the second release on Aural Assault Records, whose first outing was the debut single by Crispy Ambulance way back in April 1980.


ASSAULT TWO:

The record is also available on Aural Assault records and includes a free bonus Crispy Ambulance single (Aural Assault 1) here...
www.ltmrecordings.com/scissorgun_aar002.html

See further details on the Factory Records website...
cerysmatic.factoryrecords.org/2017/06/scissorgun-aural-assault-two-10-inch-vinyl-album-and-cd.html


REVIEWS:

"Scissorgun create Northern electronic shanties and sound collages that feel like snapshots of a city at night, moving from drunken chaos to minicab grime reveries to a new dawn electronic beauty"
(Mojo, 10/2017).

"The combined efforts of Alan Hempsall and David Clarkson, the Scissorgun project is less about 'songs', more about moods and feelings. Happily they manage to provide something to get one's teeth into and on occasion it can be weirdly catchy. There's faint echoes of, say Brian Eno and David Byrne's My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts, but whilst Assault Two borders on 'difficult music', on occasion Scissorgun feel the need to drop into the oddest sort of catchy and addictive figure into their spontaneous sounds. Which makes me very happy. The 10" vinyl, which bought back memories for me of the Klark Kent album and Killing Joke's Ha!, has five of the tracks, but it comes complete with a CD which gives you all seven and adds up to an attractive package"
(Louder Than War, 09/2017).

"Assault Two sees Alan Hempsall teaming up with synthesist David Clarkson for an album of beats, audio collage, fractured ambience and spoken word. The industrial pounding of Sahara Dreams and Caballero are beefy affairs, puncturing the album's attractive spell of narcotic delirium"
(Electronic Sound, 09/2017).

"The album blends experimental sounds and heavy beats to create something that is intriguing and captivating, musically".
(Electronic North, 10/2017).

"Taking time out from steering sonic Factory post-punksters Crispy Ambulance, principal member and vocalist Alan Hempsall has teamed up with fellow noise-maker David Clarkson of Triclops to form this indulgent but interesting and experimental project. Named after an album by the aforementioned Crispy Ambulance, Scissorgun appears to be an outlet for Hempsall's pent-up emotions, desires, dreams and nightmares, an aural assault in more ways than just the title. Opener Caballero demonstrates the pairing's interest in human voice and otherworldy rhythms with sampled vocals and almost glitching beats, before the unsettling and disorientating Bastard Son presents itself like an early Aphex Twin jam laced with somewhat bitter commentary. Your senses are likely to be battered once again with the powerful and insistent Sahara Dream before things chill out a little with the blissed-out and spiritual The Searching and soundtrack-in-waiting Kahutek (CD only). Sahara Dream gets mutated through the mangler for the dystopian and industrial album-closer Night Flight, all of which leaves the listener in no doubt that Messrs Hempsall and Clarkson are not well and in dire need of some relaxtion tapes and a stiff shot of something triple-distilled. In summary, the inner sleeve picture of the intrepid duo lounging around in the bathroom with inqusitive dog on guard says more about this music than any biog or review ever could. It's a bonkers yet engaging collage of the unexpected but yet not too far from what Crispy Ambulance have been issuing in recent years. 8/10".
(Flipside Reviews, 10/2017).

"Duo consisting of Alan Hempsall and David Clarkson. These names may not tell you much, but you may already have heard about their respective projects: Crispy Ambulance and Triclops. And yes, by Crispy Ambulance we mean the legendary 70-80 new waveband. Scissorgun does not produce a new wave but seems to get a nice portion of mustard in the 1990s, among other things. That is how opener Caballero sounds. With a couple of licks of paint, this trip-hop song-based tour could have been a closing touch on a Tricky album. Nice opener, but nothing that you have not heard and also not too subtly worked out. We are very happy that the gentlemen have chosen this as opener, so that we can skip this song, or listen to it separately when we are in a room where people consume a lot of cannabis and philosophize about the spiritual power of the Incas. No, just give us the rest of the album, with Bastard son as a real opener. This song is a beautiful disturbing soundscape that combines spoken word with electronics that seem to come from an old sci-fi movie. Dusting for Zika fits perfectly and looks like a Nokia ringtone that has ripened in a bath full of dissolved ketamine. Very much our thing, just like Sahara Dream ...
That number totally does NOT live up to expectations and breaks the entire atmosphere with that same shady 90s atmosphere that we already sniff up in the opener. And yet ... it works. This breakbeat, with dadaist synth sounds, shakes you awake. It sounds like they have taken Genesis P. Orridge out of his shadow world and put them behind a Groovebox. The Searching is very good. Atmospheric pads and a light acid bass line provide post-techno-atmospheres that we also often hear on labels such as Planet Mu. Even better is the subsequent Kahutek. This song creates a hostile psychotropic ambience atmosphere full of bizarrely manipulated synth sounds that really frightens us out. We do not forgive these gentlemen for the fact that the song stops after four minutes. We would like to see a 90-minute drone cassette with just this number. Sahara Night Flight sounds very spontaneous and immediately flies in. The Residents could have made it and we already see the masks. A reverse effect was rarely applied so beautifully. Assault Two has become a bizarre album that does its best to deviate as much as possible from what is common. And yes, we like that. So nice that we reward it with a generous eight out of ten and a kiss from the reviewer".
(Dark Entries magazine, 11/2017).

'The music here is more moody than industrial. It's very synthy, pulse oriented and somewhat self conscious. There are certain melodic fragments with a wisp of Eno hanging about them.
(Byron Coley, Wire Magazine, 12/2017)


BROADCASTS:
'The Searching' on BBC Radio Merseyside / Roger Hill - Oct 2017.
'Bastard Son' on BBC Radio Lancashire / Steve Barker - Oct 2017.
'Sahara Dream' on Reform Radio / Graham Massey & Sam Healey - Jan 2018.