Perhaps it’s a subconscious concession to the aesthetics of SoundCloud, but there’s a wave of British guitar music emerging that appears as if suffused with an orange glow. The colour of the platform through which this music is often presented may shade my perception of it, but the synesthesia of bands like Theme Park, Outfit, Pet, CYMBALS and below, Mozart Parties seems clear on the hearing of their music back-to-back, a soundtrack to a fading day.
On the surface, these bands are all stabbing synth-driven euphoria, gregarious and ebullient, fervent and florid because of it. But underneath, there’s a moodiness that’s been the preserve of the young and educated and slightly hedonistic since New Order first made sadness danceable. More pastoral than urban, there’s an outsider charm at play that carries a debt to Wild Beasts’ singular furrow, stretched through obsessions with synth Britannia and twenty-something time-to-make-real-life-decisions disorientation. The weight of the world that’s sometimes as light as a feather. It’s an intriguing contrast.
With “Black Cloud”, Mozart Parties are coloured a dying sunset of regret, happy with the skin they’re in but morose at something other lingering within. You wanna cry, but you don’t know why. It’s probably growing pains at growing old. Like their peers, they’re holding on to the thought of being almost-young forever.
DOWNLOAD Mozart Parties – “Black Cloud”
CYMBALS have been featured in Vice’s Noisey series, filmed aboard Lightship 95 as part of our Watery Domestic party last month. The band were filmed playing four songs, including two new tracks, “No Bad Decisions” and “Intense Kids”, as well as two tracks taken from their debut album, “Single Printed Name” and “Jane”.
In related news, there are only 3 copies of the limited 12″ pressing of Unlearn available. The record is also available digitally through all the usual sources and all buy links are below:
Heartbreak High and My So Called Life. The Wonder Years and Party of 5. Rosanne and Jeepers Creepers. Daria and Rad. 120 Minutes and The Year That Punk Broke. Over-sized jumpers and Benneton. Friends and Gap. Smack and The Face.
Gently aching with the grace of the house that adorns the front cover of Yo La Tengo’s And Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out, Edinburgh’s Pet are lit up in the blue of the half night, shaded in the blue of suburban disquiet.
Driven by it’s almost motorik mantra, “What You Building?” grows to a barely climactic coda, answering it’s own question as its collapses into a kind of exhausted joy. The kind of exhaustion only the truly young and sad know, making something out of nothing.
The spirit of Nico filtered through the dystopian gloom of Bristol’s last thirty years, angst pouring from the concrete, dub apexes eeking out of the the traffic hum, bass in every leaden footstep, the very buzz of life.
With “Unchain Me”, B is exorcising some more Based God cosmic worries, tripping over his own tongue spinning off into inner space where he’s safe from harm. So “Unchain Me” stands as another testament to being yo’self in the face of the fake. Not the best rapper alive, which makes him just about perfect
