Welcome Embarrassing Machines into your life: hair, beards and an amazingly beautiful mixture of music and spoken word that will leave you stunned, breathless and gagging for more.

Embarrassing Machines play wombatwombat on Friday 08 April 2011 @ NAC

Embarrassing Machines were formerly known as Black Sky Choir: what prompted the name change?

We thought that Black Sky Choir probably sounded fairly emo to anybody who'd never heard our music before and we just wanted to avoid any confusion.

What does your moniker say about your music...

Embarrassing Machines started off as the first song we ever wrote as a band, it was the name of the poem Jordan wrote and we all grew to like the idea of naming our band after it the more we kept playing it. The words themselves don't have anything to do with the music really, we just all grew really fond of the poem and those words and felt it would be a more fitting band name than the old one.

...and what does your music say about life?

We've tried to cover as many different moods with our music as we can but I would say a lot of the music is fairly dark. All of us are guitarists and have always been drawn to that bleak, post-rocky guitar sound that you hear in the early Mogwai records and Godspeed You! Black Emperor albums and our love of that sound has had an impact on the way we write music.

What are the three most important things we need to know about your band?

1. Our recordings are all made outside of studios, either in Oli's shed or Alex's house and so they all have quite a lo-fi sound.

2. We're quite into beards. Hair and beards, actually. Any hair around the face/head area is always encouraged.

3. We're also quite into Ghengis Khan.

Which local/national/international bands do you have an affinity with and why?

Well, we're huge fans of so many bands but as for bands we actually know there's fairly few. We're big fans of Spidermilk, we've been looking for a church that would be willing to put on an epic, lengthy post-rock gig with both of us on the bill but we've had no luck in finding one yet...

Who does what in the band?

All of us play guitar at some point or another but the basic set up is Nick on guitar or piano, Jordan on guitar or vocals, Oli on bass or trombone, Will on guitar and Alex on drums. Sometimes Oli drums though. He's pretty ferocious.

You can download seven tracks by Embarrassing Machines for FREE from this link – do it.