Sheffield's The Suncharms formed in 1989, inspired not only by the flourishing indie-pop scene, but also by the sonic experimentation welling-up around them that would soon come to be known as shoegaze. Following initial garage rehearsals the band soon found themselves supporting indie-pop legends such as The Brilliant Corners, St Christopher, The Orchids and The TV Personalities. By 1990 their first demo tape had secured support slots with emerging shoegaze bands such as Cranes, Catherine Wheel and Curve which brought the attention of Wilde Club records and in June 1991 their first EP was released, reaching a respectable No.23 in the UK indie charts. In November 1991 a second EP Tranquil Day followed, which led to a Peel session in April 1992. Sunday Records approached the band about the possibility of releasing something way back in 1992, but sadly the familiar scenario of band members' lives going in different directions began to hamper progress and in April 1993 The Suncharms played the last gig of their initial phase. After a long period of inactivity, the band reunited to finally record their debut album, Distant Lights, in 2021 and now they have reworked the title track of that album to produce a rarity of this age, a CD single. 'Distant Lights' has been given an extended remix with over a minute added, including a lovely textured guitar and harmonic vocal intro that forms a neat contrast with the solidity of the song when it finally kicks into gear. Guitars continue to swirl around the solid beat as the vocals drift by, never assuming any urgency, but adding a dreamy sheen that soothes away any uncertainty the guitars bring. It really is a pretty thing as is the new track 'Telescope' which opens to seagulls and seaside bustle. Again, it is the guitars that bring a nice edge to what would otherwise be a gentle stroll and it all adds a hint of danger to a prettily melodic tune. The final track of the EP is the album version of 'Distant Lights' so you can see how it has been transformed for this EP. Lovely stuff, well worth an investigation and available to buy from The Suncharm's Bandcamp.
Silver Biplanes - A Moment In The Sun
Wiaiwya
Released: 27th January 2023
A Moment In The Sun is the debut long player by Silver Biplanes, a melodic indie band based in Bedfordshire, featuring wife-and-husband team Vanessa and Tim Vass alongside drummer Rob Scott. Tim is well known to us as the bassist and lyricist in the legendary Razorcuts, co-writing all of their songs, including those on the The World Keeps Turning, one of our favourite ever releases, which originally came out on Creation in 1989 before being reissued in a deluxe vinyl edition in 2020. Tim also played in Red Chair Fadeaway, Dandelion Wine and the Forever People, whilst Vanessa was the singer in '90s indie band The Melons who are probably best remembered for their two live sessions on Mark Radcliffe’s Radio 1 show. Given their backgrounds, there is little surprise here that Silver Biplanes produce sweet indie pop in a style that could have been labelled as "cute" but for its lack of ragged edges. The music here is sharp, assured and well-constructed, and though it pretty much walks a straight line, hints of psychedelia, post-punk and krautrock touch the songs giving them a vital individuality that makes the whole collection intriguing. 'UAS 29396' has attractive psych nuances and dual vocals that lap around each other, the fetching harmonies building a smooth atmosphere that is immediately swept away by the burst of guitars that open 'No Better And No Worse' which comes straight out of the early 1990s and sounds like a meeting of Razorcuts and The Popguns. This in turn, feeds into the melancholy of 'All Fools' Day' and the folky jangle of the brilliantly titled 'Fairground Rocket Ride'. And that is how this collection works; each track clearly belongs, but each can stand alone and that is a remarkably difficult thing to achieve. Repeated plays only serve to reinforce both the unity and the tangents. As you would expect, there are some great lyrics with 'Searching For Your Name' particularly moving and echoing a theme found in old Razorcuts' songs: a sense of belonging to a place tied to an affinity with the natural world that surrounds it. "Later on, we climbed to the top of the hill / Racing back ahead of the sundown / Far below the lamps all came on one by one / Lighting up the skies of my hometown." Fabulous. The album has been pressed on orange vinyl in a limited run of 500 and is available from the WIAIWYA Bandcamp page. It also has an excellent cover.
Aug Stone - The Ballad Of Buttery Cake Ass
Stone Soup
Released: 9th February 2023
If you have ever read Graham Chapman's autobiography you will have some idea of the headspace this book inhabits. In the first handful of pages Chapman narrates the circumstances of his birth, all quite different, about seven times so you have no idea what the truth actually is. It had us in tears on a first reading and Aug Stone's whimsical tale certainly does the same as he exposes the pretentions of both musicians and music enthusiasts, and the way they bend ideas around their self-created myths. There's not a hardness to his tone; we suspect that Stone would acknowldege many of their foibles as his own and its clear that he is poking fun out of every one of his book's potential readers. It's a story with a theme that will be familiar to many of us. Two music obsessives are in search of the Holy Grail of records, the album Live in Hungaria by the legendary band Buttery Cake Ass and we are treated to an account of their endeavours as they tear the land apart in the hope of uncovering any clues that could lead them to their goal. As they delve deeper, the story of this legendary band is revealed, the characters of the musicans and their accomplices dissected, and the nature of obsession observed. If you were into music in a big way before the rise of the internet and Discogs, as many of us were, then you have probably arranged trips to the record shops of remote towns and cities to try and find that rare gem that had always eluded you. We cannot remember how many times we spent entire days trudging around every corner of London to try and find records that twenty years later we bought online in a few minutes. The journey was an adventure, the joy when you discovered something long sought-after was intense, the anticipation before you finally managed to get it on to a turntable to see if it played properly was nerve-wracking. Yet nothing we were seeking was as rare as the mythical dodgy pressing of Live In Hungaria or the hilarious and much-treasured blank tape of Live In Hungaria Live. Stone's writing comes alive when he describes music. It is clear he has a passion for it which warms us to his invented band who certainly inhabit the real world, influenced as they are by contemporary artists, and it's impossible not to try and form ideas of exactly how they sounded. One thing is certain: Buttery Cake Ass were a great band and could inspire an audience so if you ever see a copy of Live In Hungaria, make sure you snap it up. We'll certainly be looking for it when we flick through racks of obscure albums in remote pop-up record fairs. If you love records, or if you have a fascination with the absurd, you will enjoy this book. The detailed discography at its end is in itself a work of joy. For many of us Stone is saying, this is your life...
If you can't find a copy in your local book shop, then check out Aug's website here.
Tren Go! Sound System / Ornamental -
Live In Porto
VRTX - Future Forton
Weird Beard
Released: 10th February 2023
Weird Beard open the new year with two limited-run cassette releases from familiar names. If you enjoyed the Assessment LP by Tren Go! Sound System and Ornamental put out by Dirty Filthy in 2021 then you can't go wrong with Live In Porto which features some of the same music, though captured in one forty-four minute session. The combo's album emerged from the bleakness of the pandemic with a rare vibrancy and this runs through this live set. TGSS is the solo project of 10,000 Russos' Pedro Pedana and his guitars flash and fizz as Sidney Jaffe's drums are everywhere as they drive the music on with relentless energy and verve. The live setting is definitely the place to enjoy these sounds, the whole coming together in one life-affirming experience.
In July 2019 Vert:X began an ongoing project, The Orange Album, which was designed to be a living thing with tracks being added as and when they were recorded. Listeners are able to download individual pieces or the whole album, which currently stands at forty tracks over seven hours, with everything available for free or pay what you want. This makes it pretty much an essential collection to own and anybody interested in the psych field will find plenty to love there. Future Forton consists of six specially chosen tracks from the album that have been remixed, repurposed and released under the VRTX banner. Marek Bublik from spacerock giants Litmus has joined Mat Handley (electronics), Dave Millsop (guitar) and Neil Whitehead (bass) to add vocals to the songs which are nicely muggy and distorted accumulations of sound off which his voice is made to bounce and echo and sink. There are sixty-seven minutes of goodness here.
The TGSS/O cassette is the third in Weird Beard Tapes Series III, while the VRTX is a stand-alone release, but both are extremely limited and will be snapped up quickly when they go live on the label's webpage, so dive in with alacrity.
The Telescopes - Experimental Health
Weisskalt
Released: 24th February 2023
Experimental Health is the fourteenth album from The Telescopes and their third release on the Weisskalt label. The album was created entirely independently by Stephen Lawrie in a remote cottage in West Yorkshire between January and May 2022 using only broken toys and cheap synths, mostly pocket operators and miniatures. Stretching over some thirty-eight minutes, Lawrie describes the eight tracks here as "folk music", a term generally used to hint at grounded truths being expressed in sound, incontestable tales of the land finding a voice. But these are not tales of England's north; this is folk music only in the relative simplicity of its construction. There are no guitars but the overall sound is textured and deep, as ably mirrored by the fabulous sleeve artwork which shows layers breaking down, depths exposed and uncovered patches of colour reflecting the light. If it was textured it would be the perfect simile for the music it houses.
Life is decay; we are all broken and in the process of breaking down more. Often, as something breaks down it reveals something else you may not have noticed that may surprise you by its hidden qualities and strengths. Existence isn't skin deep and Stephen Lawrie is one of very few songwriters who understands this. There are recesses in the mind, caverns in the soul, vacuums in existence. Shiny exteriors are for pop stars and salesmen; the superficial is not for artists. Here, with his cheap array of instruments, Lawrie constructs songs that have more form and structure than much of his previous music as he finds coherence in shards and remnants. It gives him the confidence to sing rather than whisper beneath the surface. This isn't folk music as much as soul music, but Lawrie doesn't emote: the strength of his feelings are carried by his words and his words are poetry: "There is no sense / In this pretence / Our common sense / In passing tense."
As is made clear by the album title, there is a focus on the pandemic, its governance and the feeling of helplessness it generated. Knowledge and the search for understanding are dwarfed by an inalienable sense of right on the other side; nothing can shake free of its unbreakable grip. Verity and decency shatter and a response to that can only be found in the realm of the broken, the cheap and discarded. But Lawrie finds such a voice and the sounds he captures can be intense. 'The Turns' is a broken fairground ride that nearly bounces along and Lawrie's lyrics touch on a theme he has expressed before: "Live while you can and live all over / When you're dead you'll be dead all over." The state of the world is grim and will not change and the only escape is to grab what light you can. And that isn't easy as life does not fold into neat packages. "I get lost. And I get found ..."
The Telescopes' previous album, Songs of Love and Revolution, was a stunning record that considered whether life and joy are just scratches on the surface of existence. Similar questions are raised here. Can you fight or is that a waste of the valuable seconds you can spend living given that the ground will keep on holding...? Stephen Lawrie is able to voice complex existential thoughts in such a powerful way and he is clearly making the best records of his life. This album is absolutely gripping in sound and consequence. And intelligence. And perception. And in Lawrie's unsated need to work from every conceivable angle. And every fucking thing else that you can possibly think of. This is brilliant.
Trampolene - Rules Of Love And War
Strap Originals
Released: 17th March 2023
For those of us who remember Trampolene as the spiky inheritors of the early Manic Street Preachers, it has been fascinating to watch their evolution over the past few years. Time has certainly rubbed away some of the rough edges of their sound, yet the sharpness of their minds has not blunted, and with age they have gained an ear for melody and a realisation that you can make just as big an impact by asking nicely rather than shouting into the night. The result is Rules Of Love And War, an album we would never have believed the band could have made a few years ago, but one that may just come to be seen as their greatest ever achievement. For this record of twelve songs over forty-two minutes not only has a bit of everything thrown into the mix, but is worked so cleverly it appears seamless, rounded and whole; the Tramps' manifesto dressed so finely it cannot possibly fail to be noticed. A large part of this is down to songwriter and guitarist Jack Jones who is such a vibrant and charismatic figure that his personality and sheer love for life shines through every note here, though he is ably supported by his long time partner, bassist and backing singer Wayne Thomas. Though we suspect that Thomas would be more at home with his instrument slung low whilst the band crashed through the shadows, he really delivers here, with the lightness of his touch adding to the almost summery brightness of the arrangements. That's not to say he doesn't takes the opportunity of showing some muscle in the harder moments, such as the fantastic 'Sort Me Out', where Jones also remembers just how good an alternative rock guitarist he is. The rockers are few and far between, though, surrounded as they are by lighter pop moments, ballads and Jones's excellent spoken-word poetry, but it all fits so well. Not many bands have the ability to fold so many different strands into something that holds together so neatly and as you delve deeper into the melodies it is impossible not to conjure up thoughts of Small Faces and The Boo Radleys who were both masters of the craft. 'Lena Lullaby' is gently gorgeous while major highlight 'Together', reminiscent of Drugstore, is built so harmoniously it takes the breath away. These boys love playing together and though returning original drummer Kyle "Mr" Williams matches Thomas in not imposing himself too heavily into these songs throughout, his clever playing here only serves to emphasise how solid this band are when they hit a groove. This record could have not been put together without the obvious love, camaraderie and belief this trio exude. There are no bad moments; this is just a beautifully made record from beautiful people. Trampolene are a treasure.
Los Kowalski - El Ocaso Del Uni
Weird Beard (UK)
Released: 10th March 2023
Los Kowalski were formed in 2011 by Pablo Fuentes, Manuel Gutiérrez and Arturo Ponce after Fuentes had advertised on the internet that he was looking to form a band. Hailing from Mérida Yucatán, Mexico, the band had no distinct formula in mind when they came together other than the fact that they loved Primal Scream's Kowalski, and their sound evolved over the years as they experimented, absorbing the different visions of each of the members. This eclectic approach led to Los Kowalski creating sounds that moved from distortion to warm soundscapes, filled with elements of shoegaze, krautrock, post-punk and IDM. Their first album, Dejarte Ir, produced by The Obsolete, was released on cassette-only in 2018 and now Weird Beard and Echodelick (US) have taken the opportunity to press their follow-up, El Ocaso Del Uni (Twilight of the Oni), a record that would have emerged sooner had it not been for the pandemic. The first songs here began to be shaped back in 2017 over nights spent in a free space the band discovered and the idea behind the music was to create a meditative state where they could travel the roads that led through their dreams where the Oni were found. These are organic and synthetic hybrid beings, human and digital, products of the band's imagination, who needed to be appeased by mantras that would allow them to be dominated and guided from night to dawn. That should give you some idea of what to expect here as there is almost a religious quality to the music, the band investing it with the peace of the night and the spirituality of their surroundings. Just like the cover of the record, the contents are mapped out in exquisite detail, creating straight paths with synths shining and guitars sparkling above steady rhythms and vocals that have a numinous solemnity. There is certainly a power that can break through the hypnotic sheen – these Oni are not easy to convince – but even the distortion of '323' and the weighty guitars of 'Paprika' and 'Paprika 2' only add to the liturgy rather than break into heresy. An album of the night, best played when the world is more attuned to its essence. This is a pressing of only 200 in orange vinyl so, as usual, get in quickly here before they all disappear.
Firefriend - Decreation Facts
Little Cloud / Cardinal Fuzz
Released: 21st March 2023
In the crowded psych field there are a handful of bands who are widely recognised as being at the top of their game and embraced as such. Firefriend come into that category; they may have been making music for nearly two decades but they have used that time well, growing in outlook and stature and releasing a series of albums of astonishing quality, each one of which takes a step in a different direction. It's a restless world and the enemy adapts so it is good never to become predictable and never to stay in one place for any length of time. So with Firefriend you cannot guess what is coming next and that only adds to the excitement when the trio announce that new music is on the horizon.
Decreation Facts certainly treads new ground. Whereas 2021's brilliant Dead Icons dripped slowly through your consciousness and captured your soul through stealth, this collection simply scares you to death and leaves you shaking on the floor. If you think you have heard unsettling music before, you were only at the prologue as Firefriend here write the definitive book on how to unnerve and disturb. As guitarist/vocalist Yury Hermuche told us, "We wrote and recorded this album between the pandemic and WW3 – times of groundbreaking changes – and somehow that uneasy feeling got into our songs. Reality is the most crazy trip, isn't it? And we're always trying to explore new territories: we want a new album to take you to new places, so we were chasing the sounds, structures and moods to make this a truly new album to match this wild new world." It's a struggle to hint at just how this record sounds. Take The Doors at their most spaced out, cross them with Siouxsie and the Banshees at their scariest (1980-81), inject them with liquid paranoia and you are halfway there. A lot of the credit for this must lie with bassist and vocalist Julia Grassetti who plays the creepiest basslines, not content with notes that build the melody and carry the song along, but instead forming patterns of sound that make you believe there's something fatal lurking just around the corner.
This is dark from the off. An ominous keyboard drone opens 'Rainbow', one of the more straightforward songs here, but even this collapses into distortion halfway through whilst Julia's expressive vocals help to hone an edge that only becomes more cutting the deeper you delve into the album. Road traffic fights its way through the title track while the bass does its damage and Yury and Julia open proceedings with "I lost my soul last night ..." The guitars play whatever the hell they like, breaking the skin of the song which then just stops dead after two and half minutes. Bloody hell. C. Amaral's metronomic drumming drops us into the hell of 'Acid Rain High-Speed Clouds' which struggles to be a song at all rather than a fatal injury, while 'Hunt' begins with a gorgeous slew of distorted guitars and appears to be four unconnected layers of sound that have been glued together to make one disturbed vision. 'The Lost Decade' is probably the most classically formed song here with Yury dropping telling vocals over a quite glorious guitar line that bends and wavers through the whole song before 'Outer Limits' closes the first half, all whispered threats and edgy bass.
The guitars in 'Infrared' throw in tense horror movie riffs as Yury and Julia harmonise over towering drums and angry keyboards, the song burning but never finding respite, while 'Shooting Stars' is broken and distorted and dies young. 'Moldy Cream' is another gem, with its dislocated limbs neatly sewn together, with 'Beatrice's Cake' offering dark psych as drugged guitars wash over Julia's wistful vocals. "You will always have one more chance," she repeats, unconvinced. 'Last Letter From The Reckless Son' is a tense uphill climb, with Yury half-whispering his vocals amid drum metal and disturbing echoes, with Julia closing the album with 'We're Going In The Wrong Direction', a plaintive slow number built on a piano with a wistful Moog seranade. It's a fine way to close a dark record, resonating with empathy and poignancy.
This is a well-named record. "Decreation" is the undoing of creation, something destructive and primal and that is a theme captured so well in these twelve songs. Yury explained to us that the album "is a commentary on our 21st century, so violent and radical. We live in times of accelerated transformation. It seems like one of those decisive historical moments that changed the world. This lust for wars and destruction and death and coups is airborne, repeated exhaustively in the press, on TV. At the same time that the internet is changing our understanding of the world, we are also dealing with AI and robots, DNA editing, the disintegration of work and money, and unprecedented environmental destruction. It's probably the most volatile time in our entire history because people have really forgotten what a nuclear bomb is – or what 10,000 nukes can do. And all of this has direct implications for our lives, because reality is overwhelming. But on the other hand, this moment is also one of great hope – we can do so much better with all the tools available, our diverse cultures, technology, humanism. It's all hanging by a thread - that's the absurd poetry that shapes this album."
Decreation Facts truly is a stunning achievement. It is a record that ably captures the zeitgeist of the times and one that will have your brain in a whirl. Seldom have we come across a collection where we have had to turn the record off at various stages just to think about what it is doing and what it is saying. And to shake our heads clear. It's remarkable. The digital version of the album is being released on 21st March on Bandcamp, though the vinyl will not arrive until late May. Of course, there will not be enough of this album pressed, with only 500 copies shared between Little Cloud (US) and Cardinal Fuzz (UK), so fight like a bastard to get one. In the meantime delve into the digital world and by the time the vinyl arrives you may just have got your head around what has happened here.
Exclusive Video
We're Going In The Wrong Direction
"I wrote that piano ten years ago and it finally made it on to one of our albums. I guess that happened now because those arrangements and words somehow fulfil what we were seeking as the end point for this album, something simultaneously beautiful and melancholic."
Described as the "transit point between light and shadow", Les Nadie are a desert heavy-psych duo from Córdoba (Argentina) originally formed in 2018. Juan Conde (guitar, vocals) and Rodri Deladerova (drums) were inspired to write music by fellow Argentinian bands such as Los Natas, Dragonauta and Los Antiguos, aiming to explore the mental frustrations and challenges they faced in the arid north of the country. They quickly developed their sound into a formula in which they alternated heavy riffs with calmer passages of music that reverberated with a shoegaze sound, their songs influenced by the vast emptiness of the desert and northern winds; dry places such as Catamarca steeped in native shamanism and the never-ending confrontation between the white and the black coyote. This is certainly an album of extreme contrasts and it opens in punishing style with 'Grito El Indio' which is pretty much all heavy guitar attack, while the following 'Zhonda' switches between a similar weighty battering and softer moments with distant vocals. 'En Tu Destierro' ('In Your Banishment) finds a nice balance between the excoriating and the soothing, while 'Helleden' eschews the carnage for lightness and melody. This wild contrast endures throughout the nine tracks, which stretch to thirty-seven minutes, with the album at its best when it flickers between the two extremes with the least amount of friction. The highlight, 'Del Pombero', succeeds in remaining weighty and serious through all of its changes. Destierro y Siembra has been pressed in a limited run of 300 copies of which 150 are in colour and 150 in black vinyl. These in turn have been split between Dirty Filthy (UK), Echodelick (US), Psychedelic Salad (Aus) and Spinda (EU) so there will not be many available anywhere, so dive in quickly.
Ist Ist - Protagonists
Kind Violence
Released: 31st March 2023
At the end of 2021 Ist Ist stood at a crossroads. Their second album, The Art Of Lying, was made under the constraints of the lockdown in circumstances that were as challenging as they were unpredictable. Whereas a lot of bands were consumed by the darkness that accompanied the pandemic, Ist Ist moved in a different direction, looking to the future with a warming positivity, softening the edges of their sound and dressing their music in more colourful hues. They forgot where their barbers lived, opened themselves up to new ideas and embraced new sounds. All of this was a surprise as few bands had delineated their career trajectory more precisely than Ist Ist; building their future on their own terms they had an exact vision of what they wanted to be and how to achieve that. There was no room for compromise. Different paths now stood before them and we waited with fascination to see which direction they would take.
Deep down we believe we always knew the answer. Ist Ist had become synonymous with stark, linear music rooted in the monochrome world of post-punk and it would have been a step too far to swerve away from that. Even more so, they had been buffeted by the pandemic, pushed into paths they had no intention of treading and this had lessened their control. This is a band who could not stand for being the pawns of capricious fate; the Manchester four-piece are too immersed in their own story to be anything but protagonists, so it was really no surprise that the opening track here, 'Stamp You Out', is an absolute declaration of intent. Bassist Andy Keating informed us that this was one of the last songs to be written for the album, symbolic of the headspace the band found themselves in during writing and rehearsing, yet it is a clear affirmation that Ist Ist had refound their focus and would not be moved again. "We know who you are. We know who your friends are. Our intention is to stamp you out." It's a bastard of a song, opening to Keating's huge bass, and it refuses to take a breath as it powers through three punishing minutes. As this stunner charges to its conclusion, Adam Houghton's guitar squeals as it ushers in the equally emphatic 'Something Has To Give'. Houghton appears to scorn the idea of always looking for change and the necessity of sticking to your guns. He remains immovable despite the backing track stuttering around him. As if to underline that Ist Ist are back and unbending, side two of Protagonists opens with 'Emily', a track taken from 2018's Spinning Rooms EP. The song is a live favourite that has remained in the band's set to this day and its inclusion says everything about this record. Keating explained, "Part way through the demoing of the new songs we were listening back to them and getting a sense for the feel and vibe of the album and we said "It needs an Emily." Once we decided it wasn’t a sin to re-record something from a previous release we realised the Emily it needed was Emily, so we re-worked it a bit for the album." Originally recorded as a three-piece, the new version is fatter yet just as potent and it is difficult not to lose yourself in what has in reality become the band's anthem.
If Protagonists had been merely Ist Ist returning to their roots then it would have been a splendid thing, but the greater achievement here is that the band have not only dug back to their foundations, but they have managed to build on them, and build well. The first echo of this is in 'Nothing More Nothing Less' which opens with another fine Keating bass line but is then dominated by Mat Peters' keyboards which introduce a magical sheen. Peters is very much the Eno of the band, subtly adding filigree to the songs that are big on guitar yet taking charge of the quieter ones and truly infusing them with his vision. Never has the interplay with Houghton's guitar sounded this good and never before have the band created anything that would grace any radio station of any affiliation on the planet. It's a remarkable thing. And it doesn't stand alone. 'All Downhill' opens with an offhand guitar salute, and Joel Kay's precision keeps things spotless while Houghton shows how far his lyrics have matured. "There is no way through dissolution, trying hard to show you're strong. For all we know you're all in. They call it belligerence, I call it sin." Again, every song on this album contains the word "I". Everything is the world as it impacts on his mind and his thoughts spill out as commentary which is both intensely personal and coldly observational. His phrasing improves on every record. Houghton could sing the shopping list and make it sound portentous, yet his voice becomes more human and less detached the more he modulates and though the change is subtle, it is clearly there.
There are ten songs here over thirty-eight minutes, just as there were on Architecture and The Art Of Lying. Ist Ist have an innate knowledge of what is right and it serves them well. There isn't a weak moment; there is drive and renewed purpose and we cannot think of any other band whose vision is as strong now as it was half a decade ago. The cover shows a photograph of the sea at Brighton. Ist Ist have just about conquered the country from Manchester down and have already sold out gigs in Europe and the States. Now they are looking at the world and you would be wrong to bet against them.
