Alien Alarms—aka Jim Purbrick— recently served “The Handles Turn”, guerrilla philosophy. Purbrick, a veteran active since the ‘90s (Formation Records alumni, no less), has moved from dancefloor provocateur to a one-man music-lord.
“The Handles Turn” slaps like a fever dream on steroids: a robot having an existential meltdown inside a creaky carnival ride. What starts as a quirky daydream about escape turns into a call to overthrow the system. Purbrick’s secret sauce was taking the squeaks and groans of old-timey gizmos from Brighton’s Hove Museum of Creativity and turning them into a beat that stumbles and lurches like a malfunctioning cyborg. The groove is nasty tho, built on granular processing.
Cooked up in Purbrick’s homemade bunker (the Alien Alarms studio), the track throws Fender and Martin guitars into a blender with glitchy Ableton wizardry. And let’s not forget the batshit-crazy Lego video (yes, Lego), where minifigure skeletons riot in sync with the beats—a visual obvious protest to the capitalist grind, edited with Max For Live’s hyperactive precision.
Purbrick pivots from his 2024 politically charged album “Utopia Or Dystopia?” to zoom in on local absurdities, but the message stays lethal: we’re all cogs dreaming of smashing the system. Recent gigs—like Splitting The Atom at Brighton’s Green Door Store or CRUX A/V in London—prove Alien Alarms isn’t just some fancy studio project.
Critics already smell the smoke: Neil March calls it “exciting, futuristic and original,” while Tom Robinson (BBC 6 Music) nods to Purbrick’s knack to “push the envelope.” Damn straight. “The Handles Turn” is a blueprint for revolt that kicks like a jackboot. Plug the music in, turn the volume up, and join Alien Alarms’ uprising.
Catch Alien Alarms detonating stages at The Rose Hill, Brighton (Monomania) and The Brunswick, Hove (Machine Learning). The future’s noisy—get loud or get out.