REPTAR

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Sometimes a band becomes successful and what follows is a plethora of copyists that spill out from it’s edges, all sounding like the genetic descendants of the original act. In days gone by it would have quickly become a scene, NME Magazine would have wet their underwear with over-excitement and the kids would be rushing to join the scene. Sadly, in 2011 we no longer seem to see this same tribal adoption, as the music-loving public are more happy to skip between genres never allowing one band, or one set of similar bands, to dominate.

This leaves music journalism with the unenviable task of writing about bands by listing endless other artists that they sound like in order to describe a new act. It’s like being a history teacher, explaining the bloodline of every new band, discussing which branch on music’s genre-packed family tree from which they’ve grown.

Well, as we turn to Reptar, a new four piece band from Athens, Georgia, we should probably start the lesson at Passion Pit and work our way through Yes Giantess, Wave Machines and more recently, The Naked & Famous. From each of these bands they’ve inherited the genes that begin to come out during the teenage years; it’s very sexual, it loves to party, it works hard on looking great, and they sound like they want to live forever.

Stand out track, Stuck In My Id, is initially lead by William Kennedy’s bouncing synths, as Graham Ulicny’s vocals swing around them like they’re on a helter-skelter. After approximately one minute the guitar appears, adding a touch of weight to the otherwise candyfloss-light tune. Lyrics of teenage angst, “I never meant to hurt you“, confirm this is music by kids, for kids. Just like a lot of quality pop.

They’re clearly able to set a different pace as they change things up somewhat on the tune Blastoff. Although it’s no revolution in their sound, it’s warmer and more intricate, drifting off into a deeper part of your brain two and half minutes in. Perhaps this is achieved with the help of Ben Allen (Animal Collective’s producer) who had apparently joined them in more recent studio sessions.

The vocals are more confident and shift around like a house fly at a party on the song, Move. What lifts them above their genetic forefathers is that they seem happy to mix up that brand of simplistic celebration pop with a touch more experimentalism. It’s with this song that they perhaps seem most happy to abandon the rules.

They have enjoyed a steady flow of online buzz since the end of 2010, culminating in an exciting set of showcases at last week’s SXSW. Their music is surely best experienced with a live set, so contagious is their energy. You can catch them if you’re in Chicago later this month, before they finish a month-long jaunt around the US by heading back to Georgia in April.

If you can’t make the live shows then you can soon grab their four-track EP, which is due in mid-May. We will have to wait a little longer for a UK visit, but we promise to let you know as soon as we hear anything (or book them ourselves!). Genetic bloodline’s aside, we’re pleased to locate a band that, at the very least, intend to speed up the evolution of any party they’re playing at. (MB)

REPTAR – STUCK IN MY ID

REPTAR – BLASTOFF

REPTAR – CONTEXT CLUES

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WU LYF – GIG NEWS

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Theses days, taking a punt on the well-worn marketing move, where you take a less-is-more attitude to what you allow the public to know and see of your new band, is nothing short of fucking boring. It’s more reactionary, rather than revolutionary, seeming as it does to kick against the over-saturation of any subject the Internet chews up and spits out. Blame the bloggers and their insatiable appetite, blame the social networks and their tiny attention spans. Blame what you like, it’s very over-cooked and if you are going to try and drip feed us with miniature snippets of confusing information then you better be fucking awesome when you get around to the big reveal.

Just look at the recent (and bloody lengthy) IAmAmIWhoAmI viral video campaign, where obscure clips of David Lynch-like weirdness gave us short peeks at a new artist by the dozen over a whole year. Amazing intrigue was soon followed by frustrating guessing games by those with zero patience, eventually outing the artist to everyone well before the campaign was completed. Here we are over a year later and they’ve still not released anything. OK, so we will still take a look once it comes out, but it won’t be accompanied by the shortened breath and dribbling excitement that they wanted.

That’s the trouble with these image campaigns, they’re fighting an increasingly vapid and insatiable beast called Generation Y, who simply cannot survive on controlled portions. They get bored and move on, muttering “whateva” under their breath as they turn their attention elsewhere. You can’t really blame them, it’s what commercial capitalism always wanted – buy something – get bored with it quickly – buy the next model please. The Internet simply taught them to digest more, faster, so the whole attention thing has sped up to light speed – or should that be cyber speed?

Anyway, those with said attention spans probably haven’t even read down this far into the article to notice that Wu Lyf, a band that have done their best to hop away from the lime lights over the last couple of years, are arriving in Brighton to play a show at The Green Door Store tonight. One thing that’s kept our attention stems from the fact that they are the bastard children of Foals and Health, making extraordinary sounds from behind their masked obscurity. For this reason alone, they are worthy of your investigation. You might even get to see their faces and everything.

The band name stands for World Unite / Lucifer Youth Foundation and they hail from Manchester – an area that’s been particularly saturated in very good, very original bands over the last two or three years, which might go some way to explain why Wu Lyf are taking their time. The news of their debut album, Go Tell Fire To The Mountain, breached yesterday as they gave us the due date of June 13th, via, wait-for-it, a mysterious video. See that below, alongside the video for their track, ‘Spitting It Concrete Like The Golden Sun God‘, which even had Michel Gondry chasing them up.

Like any cult, they’re only interested in control. They’re mythical revolutionaries that shunned the queue of major labels to release music on their own. However, like all of these contrived projects, it’s what is discovered inside the resulting music and clever designs once the smoke and mirrors are removed, that will have us concluding whether we actually want to follow or not. If more is found once the less has left, then our patience and their project will have been worthwhile. Tonight (22nd March) we have this live performance as a first proper sample, at the perfectly-suited Green Door Store in Brighton (last few tickets here) and we can all begin to decide for ourselves. The real test is whether we are all still as interested the day afterwards, once we’ve experienced the substance beyond the contrived style. (MB)

WU LYF – HEAVY POP

WU LYF – CONCRETE GOLD

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