Review Summary: a wonderful bridge between oceans
“Releasing the music of our heroes and idols on cassette”, Sexx Tapes have only been operating out of their Margate, Kent, base for a year, but have already cemented a comfortable legacy in the UK DIY scene. Now partnering up with
Conor Oberst’s Team Love Records, here we have a collection of both labels’ finest, the loveliest and the ***ed.
Opening up this mix, Sittingbourne’s
Get Inuit ride the waves just right to get that combination. Riding high on the success of their debut 001 EP, their dirty surf-pop hasn’t changed much but it doesn’t matter when it’s this good. ‘I Am The Hot Air’ soars like the best of them, and is just another glistening addition to Get Inuit’s already excellent canon.
But now we delve further into the ***ed, with Brighton’s
Gang playing haunted guitar chords, as they envelop the space around them with sleaze and camp horror. Their heavy psychedelic rock plays like the bastard child of
The Cramps and
The Wytches, bug-eyed and twitching.
The heaviness of Margate’s
Ray Gun, meanwhile, lies more in the attitude. Their amateurish grungy noise-pop is both a tribute to riot grrrl’s
Bratmobile and
Team Dresch, as well as the lo-fi indie greats of
Half Japanese and
Beat Happening. Poppy in approach, but there’s something lurking in the lurking guitars.
It’s hard to believe there’s just two lads in Brighton’s
Fuoco, considering just how big their ‘death grunge’ is. Shrieks and spits abound in horror in their distorted falling-down-the-stairs racket, as loudening screams of ‘remember me’ try to escape from the frantic amp-bursting guitars.
For Team Love’s side of the tape, all the artists here (lo-fi and from NY) resemble Conor Oberst’s early days as
Bright Eyes.
Fraternal Twin’s guitar playing is as dissonant as it is delicate, his singer/songwriter vibe aching as it is slacker.
Guilt Mountain’s humble indie pop, revels in simplicity, melodies both distant and urgent, like that of
Trust Fund and
Cyberbully Mom Club.
Quarterbacks whispers about how they ‘can’t seem to stay in love’ over plucked chords and a patchy drum machine, while
Pecas’ instrumentation is lush and dreamy, achieving a lot with a little, the melody lifted straight out of a lullaby as Sandy Davis coos and yearns over it.
Art’s Cool, in conjunction with DIY Magazine and On Margate Sounds, are putting on a lovely release show, at the Tom Thump, Cliftonville, Kent, on Wednesday September 2nd (https://www.facebook.com/events/491403987694204/), so go have some bevvies over there, not after pre-ordering the cassette (https://sexxtapes.bandcamp.com/album/margate-kent-vs-new-paltz-ny) .
