Review of Seldom Sampler One by Fake DIY

3rd Feb 2003

This is the first taste from a new label, Seldom Records, with bands recruited from the classified section of NME, and its more than just proof that someone actually reads them because Seldom have put together a nice little package here.

The first track is from Idiot Bear and Future Song sounds like the kind of acoustic solo album Noel Gallagher could have knocked out after strolling off stage at Knebworth in 1996. Formed in Durham and now based in London, such melody soaked acoustica marks them out as the next potential indie soul searchers that could be soaring out a radio near you.

Anyone who found JJ72 a little rough around the edges will be pleased/horrified to hear Belfast's Babylon By Bus are the smoothed down, less Billy Corgan obsessed version. "Take it aaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwyyyyyyyyy" Cries Mark Allsop, effortlessly where the likes of Mark Greaney, Chris Martin etc would be straining to hit the notes. Away Makes you want to buddle Babylon By Bus into the back of the nearest time machine and take them back to sometime in 2000 when such falsetto tinged anthems weren't going unnoticed. So, in fashion? Maybe not, in love? We could well be.

The Endorphines claim to make 31st century blues, so how will that sound then? Perhaps like the blues sounds in 2003 i.e. exactly like it did in the 1950s? No infact it sounds like Morcheeba trying to be Aphex twin, which is as horrible and messy as it sounds, so moving on...

Frustrated that the Beta Band turned out to be shit? Gutted Badly Drawn Boy soundtracks Hugh Grant films? Then perhaps Redneck Renegade is for you. In The Middle is possibly the first ever computer-generated barn dance; picture Neil Young electrocuting himself after spilling Moonshine on a drum machine and you're getting there.

Last but not least though is London guitar thrashers UpCDownCLeftCRightCABC+START boasting one of the most bizarre band names we've heard in a long time, they just happen to make the most mind fuckingly brilliant scuzzed up noise we've heard in a long time as well. UpCDownC are the cross-eyed soundtrack to a night round London with Jack the Ripper.

Take this track here Z-More for example it menacingly stalks your ears, bleeping and pounding until it builds to a frantic end. Then stops suddenly.

This UpCDownC track might not completely satisfy, but it leaves you gasping for more and that kids is what great rock n roll bands do.