The Grubby Mitts Art Ensemble of Mid-Bedfordshire

Emerging ten years ago from the tapered edge of Andy Holden’s art practice The Grubby Mitts have navigated a strange and winding path between art-world performance and experimental pop. After the end of the first incarnation of the band was documented in the rockumentary film Oh! My Friends There Is No Friend, recently exhibited as part of the exhibition Good Grief Charlie Brown at Somerset House, and a hiatus to write new material, the band are back playing live, with a new nine piece line up, and almost all new material. Hybrid genre-hopping collage-pop, elaborate visuals, layered electronics, emphatic repetition and bombastic brass and woodwind arrangements dominated the first album, What the World Needs is… and the The Grubby Mitts new material takes this even further. Walking out over the edge of the cliff the band won’t fall down, unless they look down.

“Extreme melancholy tempered with child-like optimism… A world of late night pub poetry, intergalactic romance, sexual, natural ambiguity and soaring, speechless humanity. The Grubby Mitts offer a overwhelming exercise in sonic, thematic world building… Majestic, loveable, challenging and outright brilliant - offering up anthems alongside avant-garde in a convincing and moving fashion.” - Drowned in Sound

www.andyholdenartist.com