Free Cesarians download!

Five minutes from the traffic jams, takeaway chains and crowded pavements of Clapton, in east London, you can slip through a small gate onto the banks of the Lea and feel you’re out in the country. Along a cobbled path are moored a dozen old-fashioned barges, and the only sounds are of water lapping gently at their sides and birds twittering in the trees. Unless, that is, you arrive on a rehearsal night.

One of the biggest barges belongs to the veteran punk-band frontman Charlie Finke and his wife, Justine Armatage, formerly violinist with 1990s goth-rockers Gretschen Hofner. Among their neighbours are the trombonist, clarinettist and tenor-horn player the couple have recruited for their noisy, disturbingly named new project, the Cesarians. They have converted the basement of a nearby pub to rehearse in, but it is around the piano on Finke and Armatage’s barge that the band often meet to thrash out ideas.

“I haven’t lived on land for eight years,” Armatage says from her surprisingly spacious galley kitchen, where she is uncorking a bottle of wine while trying not to trip over her two large dogs. “The last flat I lived in, I couldn’t play piano past 8pm without the woman below banging on the ceiling. The final straw was when she took to playing a terrible Texas album at top volume every night. It was torture.”

Armatage’s contempt for conventional, commercial music is something she shares with Finke, who spent seven years as singer with the cult Camden-based blues-punks Penthouse. When, two years ago, the pair decided to start their first band together, there was no chance of it being bland. Yet neither expected the Cesarians’ songs to be quite as provocative, personal and downright odd as they turned out. The music is part Weimar waltz, part creepy cabaret, part raucous rock’n’roll, despite being bereft of guitars.

The lyrics, delivered by Finke in a velvety, Jacques Brel baritone, explore everything from an affair Armatage had, and the couple’s subsequent split, to Finke’s past bad behaviour (he spent a spell in prison for drug-related offences) and the stillbirth of their own child. The sextet’s live shows (the band also features a non-barge-dwel­ling drummer) are theatrical and unnervingly explosive: a snarling, smartly suited Finke flings himself about, Armatage glares from behind keyboards and the brass is delivered in howling blasts.

“We’ve been called polka and cabaret, but we’re neither,” Armatage insists. “Our music is intense, intelligent rock’n’roll. Some of the songs are fairly simple, others are incredibly complicated. Some are to jump about to, others to make people think. We didn’t start out with a sound in mind. The only plan was to bar guitars. I’m so bored of the sound of electric guitars. I play piano and violin, and for years I’ve felt I was fighting to be heard. Besides, it was more of a challenge to make a rock’n’roll record without them. I also decided against getting in pretty girls to play strings, so we opted for brass instead.”

That the three female brass players all lived on nearby barges was luck. That none had played in a band before was essential. A student of classical music until her teens, Armatage drew on her training to compose complex orchestral arrangements. The brass parts could be classical were it not for the way they are played.

“Justine had ideas of how she wanted us to sound that didn’t seem possible,” admits Alison Beckett, the clarinettist. “Eventually, we developed new techniques that involve playing with your entire body. It’s a totally different experience to playing classical music, much more physical. After half an hour, we’re exhausted.”

The classical element was instrumental in attracting the former Blondie and Ramones producer Craig Leon to the project. Now a classical arranger and producer who has worked with Pavarotti and Andreas Scholl, Leon hadn’t made a rock record in more than a decade, until the Cesarians sent him demos for their eponymous debut album.

“Not for a moment did we think he’d agree, then he called to say he wanted to see us rehearse,” Finke recalls. “We were terrified, but Craig got what we’re trying to do straightaway. He said our most complex songs reminded him of the Fall.

He also said it was clear some of us weren’t professional musicians — by which he probably meant me — but that we had real charm.”

Yet Leon insisted on recording the album at Abbey Road, and the unsigned band didn’t have a budget. After a month of trying to raise the money, and just as they were about to concede defeat, the Cesarians secured a publishing deal, and the advance — “Plus the money we’d saved to spend on clothes,” Armatage sighs — paid for the studio time.

“We got a slot between one of Simon Cowell’s kids and an orchestra recording music for Wii games,” Armatage laughs. “Craig wanted to capture our live sound, so we played as if it was a gig. Charlie was going ballistic, singing like a maniac. We played better than ever before, as we were so thrilled to be there. We did a few overdubs, and Craig tinkered with the tapes, but the album is largely how we sound live.”

At their most extreme, the Cesarians’ songs could soundtrack a horror film set in 1930s Berlin, yet behind the band lies a sweet love story. “For years, Justine had asked me to make music with her,” Finke confesses. “She said she was going to rescue me from shit bands and save our relationship at the same time. I only understood what she meant when she left me. I had been ignoring her and she met someone else, a woman. My first response was to turn to drink, then I sobered up and started writing down my emotions. We formed the band when we got back together, and as soon as I heard Justine’s music, I knew where to look for the lyrics.

“Justine doesn’t mind me exposing our relationship. She encourages me to be more personal, because she wants to find out how I feel. I put words into songs I’d never be able to say directly to her. Sometimes she cringes when I sing, but I’m proving her right. She has saved me from many things over the years; now she can add shit bands to the list.”

The Cesarians’ album is available to download now at thecesarians.com. It is released on CD on June 25. The band play the Hackney Empire, E8, on July 3

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