Despite being a band when they play live, Spectrals are still ostensibly the project of Louis Jones, with friends roped in to fill out the sound. The plus side of this is that now, instead of having one band to obsess and faun over, we have two – featuring at least one member of the backing band that have made that grunged out, surf sound one of aural highlights of the year, Bhurgeist are one to add to your list for messy, low-fidelity summer mixtapes.
The sound is one closely related to that of Spectrals , but in terms of a family tree, it’s more of a cousin than a brother – a dirtier, angrier cousin at that. Gone are the slow melodies and the knowing nods to swooning sixties pop and in is a grubby garage rock ethic. There’s little meandering on show here, with urgency and vigour favoured instead. Unfortunately, it looks like we might be a little late to the party, with one cassette having sold out and the other – a split with ethiopians – quickly going to same way. It’s no surprise really – noise’s burgeoning popularity means that anything this brilliant is going to be snapped up by pretty much anyone with an ounce of sense. They’ve even got a song that seemingly references a Pokémon – a certain path into the heart of the hipsters who grew up wanting to catch ‘em all.
Bhurgeist – Slobro
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Just got SoundClouded this the other day. Googled and saw you had already covered it, should have guessed! Sounding pretty darn good.