Blurt (live), Optimo, Sub Club, Glasgow, 20 Jan

Optimo never stop breaking those darn boundaries and producing night after night to educate the ears whilst having some old fashioned Sunday fun. Possibly the finest band in the world with an onomatopoeic name, Blurt contine the trend when they hit the Subby once more to break your ears and bend your minds. They were formed back in 1980 by the enigmatic Ted Milton in the town of Stroud, one of those tiny English villages often described as 'sleepy' (a euphemism for 'dead'), the kind of rural backwater Lord Summerisle would consider behind the times. After 28 years of touring and recording, still no-one in the world sounds anything like Blurt, with their unique mixture of screaming, saxophone, hypnotic guitars, bass and whatever else they can lay their hands on. Somewhere between no-wave, noise and hard bop, Blurt are a surprisingly fun (and sensory abusing!) grooving racket and brought the place down when they played Optimo last year. This is in part due to main man Milton's tendency to deliver songs in four different personalities. Go open your mind on a Sunday night and let in Blurt's crazed and time-warped, unholy din. [Sean McNamara and Liam Arnold]