William Ravenscroft

Here’s some more winning alternative pop from Norwich label NRONE (see 2 Hot 2 Sweat in last batch of reviews), this time with Gameboy backing. Have spent far too much of my own life exploring every square centimetre of Waterdeep, Lea Monde and the Castle of the Bloodwych, instead of outside, I can only applaud the sentiment of ‘Early Sheets’, except that I don’t know what the Early Sheets bit refers to. It’s a great track though, with nostalgic spectrum-era computer game music complementing the rest perfectly. ‘Never The First’, another one of theirs, is pretty addictive too, sounding in places like a Madness song you’ve never heard before, well... a little bit, but better than that. Why doesn’t someone organise a computer game themed night with The Lost Levels, Duracell and DJ Scotch Egg? That’s a hell of a line-up there.

This is great. EIOH are an arty, lo-fi four-piece - quite rightly picking up fans all over the place, except, unaccountably, on here. I think the one vote that was on here when I wrote this is from me – not good. Tim Burgess is very enthusiastic about them, they’re his favourite new band infact, and they’ve had good write-ups in Artrocker and The Guardian, where Ian Gittins rightly called them Beefheart-esque. There’s something erratic and intense about their music that makes it so appealing. I couldn’t decide between tracks 1 and 3, but I like the bit where he introduces the ‘instrumental’ in ‘Marvels’ so opted for that one. They look right somehow too, if Amish is right, and it’s a good name. The live tracks on their myspace page have had me cursing, not for the first time, the distance between Newcastle, where I live, and London, where they do their gigs.

Charlie Brooker himself says this is ‘catchy’, which hardly covers it. After a few listens it will be with you everywhere you go and you’ll be trying to cut the tune out of your head with a kitchen knife. It’s Ricardo from the Cuban Boys and a friend that we have to thank for this, and it’s good to know they’re still active. Charlie Brooker undeniably is right about everything too, you try and find somewhere where he isn’t.

Mascot Fight bring imagination, wit and catchy tunes to the gentler side of indie, too often a world where such concepts have been long abandoned as fanciful myth, and they definitely deserve to be better known and more widely loved than they are. They get compared to Belle and Sebastian a lot, but since only a few of their songs are similar, I get the impression they think this is a bit lazy and misleading (and it is), so I won’t do the same thing, though I was thinking about it. They’ve got an equally eloquent and entertaining website, www.mascotfight.com, where you can download a load more of their tunes if you want. And you should, they’re excellent. Looks like there’s an LP coming soon too.

I’d honestly have recommended this if it had somebody else sampled all over it, but obviously rather like that it’s my Dad muttering on this track. Landfill must have spent quite some time gathering up some really amusing clips, which together give the impression of being from one long, mad rambling link. Otherwise it’s a very nice cut & paste thing, possibly all bits taken from Dad’s programmes. There’s all sorts in there, mostly unidentifiable, including some old 78s, drum ‘n’ bass and a xylophone. A lovely tribute, not much else to say really, thanks Landfill Harmonic.