Blonde Redhead - 23
Where Misery Is A Butterfly was fragile, 23 is self-assured, where Misery Is A Butterfly was sparse, 23 is heaving, where Misery Is A Butterfly broke my heart, 23 was just a bit of music.

It’s still easy to like Blonde Redhead, but it just feels that little bit harder to love them this time around. All in all their latest album is a little disappointing; a whole lot less special than the last. When I was introduced to Misery Is A Butterfly in by a mysterious French woman I met a few years back it felt as though I’d been let in on a little secret, and thereon a whole new world opened up to me. It doesn’t feel quite the same this time around. Thusly I have no

qualms in passing it off with some cheap hack combo; so I’ll suggest Bjork meeting Alison Goldfrap at the Abba show. And while that does sound like a pretty tasty little mixture, it concomitantly goes to highlight that this record failed to suck me into a world of its own.

My suggestion: buy this, and use it as an excuse to revisit the majestic last record. Well that’s what I’ve done at least.

Review by Dan Newman
www.blonde-redhead.com

Fury of the Headteachers - You Took a Scythe Home
Weighing in at eleven tracks, it's an impressively heavy debut for the biggest band on a little label. Still, Fury Of The Headteachers always threatened a masterplan in the offing and, while they may not have delivered the most exciting thing you'll hear all year it's worth bearing in mind the competition is increasingly fierce. This is the year of dancefloor, after all.

The first thing you hear in Scythe is that everything is ripped through with an electric mesh of noise and serated edges. It's not a pleasant album and while

there are tracks on here that those tuned in to it could happily get away with dancing to, if you dropped it on a club used to more mainstream treats, you'd have St Johns cleaning up the blood and casualties for hours. This isn't pretty little disco punk for Brit-rockers who've discovered basslines, this is fully charged and angry, angular post punk with all manner of jagged little teeth.

Standout tracks like the singles Fables - which sounds especially excellent here - and the frighteningly bitter Lash, blare out at you from vicious speakers, twisting through your nervous system like a particularly sharp pain. This is true throughout the album with recent single Not What It Used To Be another highlight. However, while the band's commitment to this slightly brutal form of art wave is admirable, it does lead to them being a little inaccessible at times with choruses not exactly flowing or living long in the memory. Similarly, while we love their tight chordsmanship, at times, throughout the album, you do yearn for a little more variety than is on offer.

In a year that has seen bands go from miniscule to massive in a matter of months, this doesn't feel like a breakthrough album. What it does it does well but it doesn't really give an inch anywhere but in a couple of the singles and even then, in the context of the album, it's still a pretty dense sound to get through to get to it. Those who do will be rewarded with an emergent band who are rapidly laying claim to a pretty hectic sound. This may not be the album they completely nailed it all over the park but heaven knows they've laid enough groundwork here to keep their names on many a tongue.

Review by Aidienn Ellison
www.myspace.com/furyoftheheadteachers

Tiger Force - A Wasp In a Jar
The debut album - albeit a somewhat mini album - from the London duo signed to uber-hip label Marquis Cha Cha ends with a song called Your Music Sucks. It's a sweet elegy to you music, which, the slightly twee pair don't think is all that good. A little harsh perhaps but, considering the seven tracks that come before it, they seem in a pretty good place to judge.

The album kicks off with Tiger Force Anthem, a slab of slut wave punk pop so jittery and effervescent the CD threatens to burst out of your stereo and tear around the room, slicing plants and cutting lampshades in half. It's harsh and angular with a endearingly angsty twin vocal and youthful irreverence. It rips

through it's just-under-three-minutes at a healthy pace but even then keeps itself entertained by chucking in bleeps and effects, (breakdown effects, apparently), never resting on its laurels for a moment.

This attention deficit disorder remains evident throughout the rest of this stunning debut, all the way up to the aforementioned low key closer. I would call Beat This another standout but any one of these songs on a compilation of the band's peers would draw attention. The warbled bass, the anthemic, chanting vocals, the collisions of handclaps and churning guitar chords. The nonsensical lyrics about leaving photocopies and wide-eye childish foot stomping tantrums, what for? cuz I don't like them!, slamming doors and throwing paint around the room. It's a veritable avalanche of energy and imagination.

Which leaves us with seven songs of colourful, hair raising and foot stomping not-quite disco not-quite mosh post-something agit-fun. It's a mix of influences and styles but not a knowing, carefully blended mix, but the type of mix you get when you stuff a smoothie maker full of waterbombs full of food colouring then whack it on max with the lid off. So much fizz in such a consistently blinding series of small packages, it'll do your pupils in.

Review by Aidienn Ellison
www.myspace.com/tigerforce

The Fades
These London based lads have a genuine chance of breaking through the music scene thanks to the sound they so enthusiastically create. The Fades possess a knack for writing garage-punk with old skool ska Police-esque rhythms that relentlessly grab hold of you, and quite frankly, throttle you. Via scathing riffs and brooding bass lines, this album is raw, vigorous, wiry and enthralling from the off with Get Better, and it also includes their previous single releases.

The dirty, rolling riffs of Caca, Life Support and Fruit Machine are extremely infectious, putting you in the mood for good old fashioned riot. Music is Killing

Me changes the pace temporarily, and beholds qualities reminiscent of The Clash, oozing sincerity as “This scene is over now, over now” is sung right from the heart.

The ten songs that The Fades have chosen to place on their self titled, debut album are urgent, buzzing and energised, not to mention facetiously jagged and cool. It’s a full on and enjoyable assault; straight forward, dirty but still manages to uphold pop appeal.

Review by Nancy Roxx
www.thefades.co.uk

Good Shoes - Think Before You Speak
They're on, what, their fifth single now. Who knows. I missed their first entirely, which is unlike me. I remember waxing lyrical, on picking up their second, about how they were alright but needed a lot of fine tuning. I was saying that if they got too caught up in their own hype they'd forget to tighten up their sound. I said maybe they just needed a better producer.

Whatever it was I couldn't hear in those early exchanges though, it's there now. Whether I was just deaf to it or they really did just need a few tweaks here and there, somehow, without really changing, Good Shoes are now the voice of young Britian out of (art) school and on the streets. It's not a messy caracature

of lary kids and riots, it's not a vague idea of some things that may or may not relate to real life, this is the brit pop voice reinvented for 2007.

Obviously influenced by that bright, breezy guitar pop of the nineties, don't expect some strum-happy, chorus-heavy rehash. The intelligent songwriting and nimble fingerwork is what really underpins these songs. They could easily get away with singing about the same muffled detritus other bands hint at with tunes as well structured as these. Even when its simple, on songs such as Small Town Girl or Everybody's Talking, the music is filled with an attention to detail that raises it above the simple chords and words that lesser bands peddle. When they really pull out the stops, though, they're second to none.

Take All In My Head, the obvious Pop Record. Not even nearly the most technically complex on the album it still strolls through a bed of interesting melody and musicianship, all duelling guitars and stop start rhythms. The likes of early single We Are Not The Same with its guitar-chord conversation intro and interjecting stabs of angularity completely make the song, even before you bring in the well placed bursts of vocal. My personal favourite of the songs that - at the time of writing - haven't been released, Morden, just does more than other similar indie pop songs. It's understated at times but it's there.

They've had a lot of hype (so they themselves say in the self-referencing Everybody's Talking, the only indulgent song on the album) and for a while I didn't think they were ever going to deserve it. Whatever everyone could see, however, certainly I can see it now. This is charming, crafty songwriting by a band brimming with talent and a deft touch.

Review by Aidienn Ellison
www.goodshoes.co.uk

Tiger MCs - We Go Out
I’m not sure what they put in the water down Norwich way, although if I remember my A Level Geography lessons right then before long they’ll be putting everything in the water. Anyway, away from Global Warming and its future effect on the Fens, whatever it is they currently put in the water sure has some intriguing side effects. Take Bearsuit for instance, the most violent twee that ever raped my ears with syrup, or Magoo, composed of equal parts soft introspection and self-confidently boisterous strut. And now I think you also have to take Tiger Mcs, who somehow manage to combine Belle and Sebastian with Faust, the kind of odd musical alliance that I would have thought could only exist in my fantasy collaboration game (oh the evenings positively

dance away in my head).

Thus what I’m presented with here is a wonderful mix of Indie-Pop and Kraut-Rock, fragile melancholy with a cast iron constitution, epic dalliances that flash by a minute, the best of both worlds perhaps. It’s a shambolic affair, somehow managing to hold itself together when it really should be falling apart. This, and the devoutly lo-fi approach, give the melancholic tales a real charm that warms your heart and draws you in.

The record seems to flash by without you noticing. I say that in the best possible way, no song drags or outstays its welcome, there’s never a feeling of repetition or déjà vu. Rather, you’re left with a bunch of hooks in your head and a desire to go back to the start again.

Review by Dan Newman
www.myspace.com/tigermcs

The KBC - On The Beat!
Funny story. I got the debut KBC single at the same time as the debut ¡Forward, Russia! one, looking exactly for that type of music, having scoured for the last few copies of the 7"s everywhere, only to find Rough Trade still had a boxload stashed out the back or something - even though it still took 'em a month to send them out.

That song was Trippin. It was alright and made a sort of sense but did seem a bit trapped in Manchester's Haçienda heyday. From there the next song of theirs I happened upon was Pride Before The Fall on a 51 strong In The CIty Unsigned thing from iTunes. A million average songs, two decent ones and a

classic for a quid. I had yet to be sold. The final nail was a High Voltage sampler CD which featured the unbelievable Poisonous Emblem, the song The KBC were surely invented to sing. I was this close to being sold.

However it took me ages to get into Not Anymore (although b-side KBC is well worth the hunt) so I'd resigned myself to probably putting off buying this album if it came out in the shops. More fool I, as it turns out. I don't know what happened to The KBC between a handful of singles of variable quality, from good but not amazing to superb, because in On The Beat! they've completely delivered. A more solid set of disco grooves and proto-dance beat wig-outs I couldn't have hoped for.

The strange thing is it isn't even like they've revolutionised their sound - it's the same band, the same set of beats, the same songs in many cases (five of the eleven have been released before) - it just feels right now. It doesn't feel slightly behind the beat of the rest of the music industry, it doesn't feel awkward or like it just needs an extra spark to really move your feet, it's just hit the nail on the head.

No doubt many will write off On The Beat! as an easy collection of obvious bass licks and scratchy guitar jangles but not me. Coupled with shout out lyrics and over the course of an album that clearly has ideas about itself that other, apparently more fashionista-friendly bands haven't quite realised as coherently yet, this feels substantial rather than gimmicky or bandwagon-esque. It's not rocket science and they're not quite The Future but, for an album called On The Beat!, they're packing tunes well above their station. They deserve to be a lot bigger than a lot of the bands that formed around them and this album finaly proves it.

Review by Aidienn Ellison
www.thekbc.net

If you're not that open minded, hey, fuck ya. It's gonna maraud over your favourite songs anyway. Simian Mobile Disco have done a wicked remix of Knight Of Cydonia, Switch's remix of Skip To The End is possibly the best thing ever and you all know who MSTRKRFT is, don't pretend you don't. Which brings us to the hub of all this good, good music - Paris, and a small label called Ed Banger Records.

The first Ed Banger compilation was an download only affair that brought together some of their singles and acted as a getting to know you. The second, physical edition is the real heavyweight. There are some weaker tracks, though, don't get me wrong. Label boss Busy P and some dude call Mr Flash don't always offer the goods, although Busy P's Rainbow Man is pretty indicative of the label's sound, without standing out above the other artists. Vicarious Bliss's dub mix is a bit of a low spot in my opinion but then he's yet to provide anything amazing in general.

No, no, the real magic on here comes from the labels shining lights. Mr Oizo, maybe Uffie, definitely Justice you all know (have you heard Justice's remix of Franz Ferdinand? you should). Krazy Baldhead maybe you don't, Feadz, So Me, SebastiAn I'll forgive you for not, this time 'round. Next time though, there'll be punishments. I don't want to preach to the converted but for every one who reads this website who knows and loves this music, there will be someone who refuses to embrace it.

I could sit here all day and wax lyrical about the punk ethos behind the ripped up and shredded dirty electro sleaze of Edwrecker by Feadz. About how Parisian graphic design group So Me have provided probably the best remix of Atlantis To Interzone yet (sorry Germlin). About the potentially illegal filth that is SebastiAn's brand of epoch defining carcrash house. I could talk for hours about how the minute long intro by Mr Oizo is better than 99% of all guitar music that will be released all year. There are people who will hear me say 'dance' or 'house' and turn straight off.

Oh well. Their loss. As the Mr Oizo produced Dismissed by Uffie gives way to new single Phantom by Justice I'm happy to leave behind anyone who refuses to understand that, just as indie does simply mean weepy acoustic sap, dance doesn't just mean pill popping hollow gurncorn. This is dance music for the discerning and those who have an ear for it are in for a treat. Plus, it's the future.

Review by Aidienn Ellison
www.edbangerrecords.com