We bring a genuine element of surprise to today’s recommendation. We recently went to see Bear In Heaven play at a gig last week and, to our surprise, Nullifier were supporting. We had heard whispers about this band late last year among the music circles, but we never investigated them and certainly hadn’t seen them live. It was equally surprising and rather satisfying to find out they were from Brighton. However, the biggest surprise of all was found in their live set. Not only is the music punchy, energetic and forcibly packed with melody and hooks, but it’s played with an octopus of a band onstage, consisting of eight, (yes eight!), members. Among this giant band we noticed (a totally unnecessary) two bassists, two drummers, two keyboard players and even the vocals were shared around, but admittedly it all created a playful, frenetic atmosphere. We got in contact with the main singer, Jim Morrison, (!), and he explained that there’s only really two of them writing and developing the songs, bringing together the various arms when playing live, including members from Lonely Ghosts, Help She Can’t Swim, My Device and Pope Joan. Jim described their sound as “a kind of surf-psych-synth-pop with globules of harmonic energy“, which is all very true, but if we compared them to the likes of The Infadels, that might helpfully put you in the right ball park, although there’s perhaps signs of a little more depth found here. It’s noisy, but in a good way, energetic, wild and free, like all good time bands. Just like their live sets, it’s all totally irresistable, seducing you straight from the outset. They recently completed work on their mini album, Most Evil, which will be out on One Inch Badge Records at some point later in 2010. In all honesty, sometimes we have to trek long and hard through the musical landscape in order to uncover bands that we consider good enough to make it onto The Recommender, so it was a joy on this occasion to simply walk into the room and have this awesome group bowl us over. Surprises really don’t get much sweeter. (MB)
Find them here: Myspace
Hear them here: NULLIFIER – THE SCHEME OF THINGS
