14 May 2008

Kill The Captains - Kill The Captains EP
This Sheffield band are a toiling band probably playing gigs the length and breadth of their high street to drum up support for their lugubrious sounding guitars saluting the late 90s when Pavement just about made sense.

One Little Plane – Sunshine Kid
Like the virginal sister of Scout Niblett humming her delightful tunes about life twirling around and around like a fairytale princess with a look of unexplainable joy on her face. Her band must look on benignly and wish she said cunt occasionally. A sweet tune.

Cadence Weapon – House Music
An lyricist of immense skill who detours from his usual hip hop script to plummet into the skewering beats of a techno party (understated somewhat by the single title) which sounds like it would set the room alight were it was ever played live. A superstar confined to the peripherals.

Crimes Of The Future – Screen Villains
Like the bar room music in a seventies movie this has a certain hippy anachronistic feel like the sounds emanating from the corners of Glastonbury where people are toying with lutes and mandolins. The guitar wraps its arms around you in an appreciative way so it's certainly not all bad.

Teenagersintokyo – Very Vampyr
They don’t come from Tokyo but they did meet in art class and did a cover of Daft Punk’s 'Da Funk' to confirm that they should be in a band and not just pull angular shapes in Uniclo clothes. It's highly infectious but suffers somewhat with the production which is muddier than the bottom of the Nile.

The Presets – This Boy’s In Love
Momentous dance floor anthem that has the eighties throwback all over it like Pet Shop Boys making stern heterosexuals nervous when they turn it up loud in the car on the way back from work then hide the cassette before leaving to enter the house.

Ventriloquist – I Know Kung Fu
Poet/producer Chris Redmond spins a childhood tale over what could conceivably be the sound of someone creeping up on the hero in an early eighties children’s animation. Despite this the result is the sound of a cleaner emptying a black bin bag at the back of a sparsely populated hall at a spoken word festival.

Beat Six – When The Chemicals Ignite
Coming out of Staines, London but despite the wife beater credentials this is as close to Hard Fi as a Gillette four blade is to your stubble and while the singer might peel off into potential indie ground the spectre of the comparative band is tough to shake off

Orphans & Vandals – Terra Firma
Front man Al Joshua murmurs the lyrics to this like he’s telling a ghost story to a child building up the cadences like a trained actor. Despite such a weighty delivery there’s nothing distracting enough in the background to suggest doing something other than taking the CD out and hurling it across the washroom.

Midnight Juggernauts – Dystopia
Spend too long finessing dance music and it’s easy to become bogged down pressing the same key on the Moog but Midnight Juggernauts sound like they’ve just entered the party in a sparkly dress and everyone is excited about who they're going to talk to next. Much in the same way that they used to do with Justice.

Justice – DVNO
This could easily be the sound of the future, or the sound of people having a good time in the seventies while Bill Gates was making a computer. Either/or. The Justice sound is so boringly set in stone that this is neither gleefully amazing nor despairingly bland.

The Scarlet Street Resistance – Nasty Thoughts
Is this a sedated Beth Ditto using another name? Brighton band The Scarlet Street Resistance have accidentally plagiarised the sound of The Gossip (and hence make pretty good edgy crisp pop) but what they really need to do is the change the band name because it's impossible to say without wanting to punch a mouse mat in frustration

Kunk – We’re Not Who You Think We Are
The same intense brio and desire as The Futureheads but when they sat around the table to discuss the hook on this one it sounds like they came up with one idea and as they were laying it down the drummer was probably thinking, "I’ve got to leave this band before it’s too late".