Urban Voodoo Machine back in gear for Gala.

The Urban Voodoo Machine are back from a short break and taking to the MacArts Centre stage.

Frontman P-R has a really interesting past, from moving to the UK and being homeless, selling ‘The Big Issue’, to starting The Urban Voodoo Machine and building it to what it is today.

After P-R’s short time off due to injury from an accident affecting both arms, the band are back and promoting their recent album, ‘15 Shots From The Urban Voodoo Machine’, featuring legendary artists like Jim Jones (The Jim Jones Revue), Wilko Johnson (Dr Feelgood) and Sammi Yaffa (New York Dolls – the band that inspired the Sex Pistols).

The band have also been named as “one of the best live acts in the UK” by the editor of Classic Rock Magazine, and their recent album has seen support from the likes of Radio 2, MOJO & Maverick Magazine.

In 2006 they launched the Gypsy Hotel Club in the then-unfashionable part of London’s East End, Dalston, a monthly Bourbon Soaked Snake Charmin’ Rock’n’Roll Cabaret night for like-minded misfits, movers and shakers. Time Out Magazine wrote: “If you have 12 hours to live, spend it at Gypsy Hotel!”

Magazines and newspapers have lauded them for their “mariachi-influenced blues, whiskey-soaked country rags and punkabilly-style rave-ups” (The Washington Post), and noted that they’re “drawing deep from a dirty well where Tom Waits, Nick Cave and Dick Dale are enjoying a burlesque all-nighter with Ennio Morricone” (Classic Rock). They became one of the few bands that could appear on Clive Anderson’s Loose Ends on BBC Radio 4 and Britain’s biggest heavy metal festival, Download, in the same year and win at both. Doors open 8pm, tickets £12.