Flying with the C-Bombers
By Helen Murphy and Nick Pelling
Here’s a tip: if you have ever had that feeling that maybe you could write a song, just do it. Do it while you are still alive. That is pretty much the philosophy of the duo who market themselves as the ‘PerFecT C#nTs.’ Mark Charles and Natalya K are a creative couplet with aspirations to get their real feelings across before the mortality train leaves for Shoreham, as it were.
We caught up with the C#nts in The Horse and Groom. Their music project is not as straightforward as you might think. For a start, they are a band that is not really a band. They do not do gigs. (Although they haven’t entirely ruled that out.) They are essentially makers of what Bowie succinctly summed up as simply sound and vision. And if that sounds a bit like lab-rats twiddling the knobs, you would be missing the human dimension. There is a rage in their bloodstream and they are trying to let it loose.
FREESTYLING NU PUNK?
Trying to categorise their output is pretty tricky. It is clearly infused with some punk attitudes but as Marks says, “it is kind of Nu-punk.” He ponders for a second that it might also be dubbed as ‘punk-stained-grime,’ and briefly the baffling phrase just sort of hangs in the air. Natalya intervenes: she states that their approach comes more out of ‘freestyling,’ which is where her own roots lie. We put aside the pointless search for labels.
In terms of lyrical content, they are a curious mix of the hyper-personal and the political. Heavy on the message but with improvised verbal collage thrown in. Songs like ‘Own Yourself’, ‘Zero Fantasy’ and ‘Collateral Damage’ are punk polemics against the falsity machine. As they see it, the real struggle today is the struggle just to be who you are, and escape the consumer world, now so horribly enforced by adland and endless inane so-called ‘influencers.’ In a sense, the Perfects are anti-influencers. Natalya is quick to add that this is not just a feminist outlook, “men are now almost equally enmeshed in the crap.”
ANARCHY AND ALCHEMY IN THE UK
They do not have clearly demarcated roles in the creative process. We are long way away from ideas of a lyricist and a tunesmith here. As Mark says, “we just rely on a sort of alchemy.” Natalya adds that, “we will often start with a phrase or title and ’work backwards.’” They have been very fortunate to work in the studio of the wonderful Kevin Armstrong, a man who has played guitar with Bowie, Iggy Pop and other immortals. “He has played guitar on some of our stuff but mainly he is a creative advisor.” As if that were not enough genius input, most of their videos have been made by Richard Heslop and the remarkable artist Vee Vee. Heslop’s pop-video CV includes working with The Cure, Queen, Happy Mondays, New Order and many more.
The end product is what you might call performative. The videos have more than a whiff of Sado-Masochism about them. It’s not for the children. Or maybe it is. Hard to be sure really. The Perfects are in some ways a marvellously odd double act; a weird mix of nihilism and sadistic pantomime, perhaps. They certainly enjoy incongruous juxtapositions. This may be a stupidly obvious point but maybe the best way to get your head round them is just to drop on to the punkvert.tv platform below. Careful though, or they may get their heads around you.
• Go to: punkvert.tv/perfect-c-nts and Instagram:@perfectc_nts
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