Brief encounters with bands, like with people, leave you with a first impression it’s often difficult to shake. With this in mind it’s elementary that you do not listen to These New Puritans newest offering Colours/Numbers if you have not yet met their Now Pluvial EP, featuring get-down-on-the-flo’ trademark tune “Elvis” from earlier this year. For if you do encounter the Colours/Numbers double A-side now, you will be left with a view of the band as a rather innocuous outfit. Where earlier songs “Chamber” and “C.16th” added some Throbbing Gristle to the foray of jaded post-punk influences and left them all the more compelling for it, both “Colours” and “Numbers” derive from a rather unforgivable source: Klaxons. This results in a mainly inconsequential release that will most likely be forgotten in a few months time. However the band’s addictive danceability is still intact, and the forthcoming album Beat Pyramid is still an exciting prospect.

 To fill the gap of clamorous dance-punk in the meantime check out Free Blood. “OH NO! NOT ANOTHER NEW YORK-BASED FUNK-INSPIRED DANCE BAND!” I hear you cry. Never fear, Free Blood’s debut EP (Functionably titled “EP 1″) is less Rapture, and more Timbaland- All stupidly kinetic bass-based drum beats and joint vocal duties that would not be out of place of Futuresex/Lovesounds. All the pleasure and none of the guilt then. Lead track from the EP “Quick and Painful” is the floor-filler. 3 and a half minutes of unrelenting feet-shuffling and some fucked up electronic mewing. “Never Hear Surf Music Again” then, is for the afterparty, a drugged-out 8 minute extension of it’s predecessor that’s just made for a DFA compilation. Hot Chip and ACTH’s remixes are playful and equally listenable appendages to the EP, proof that there’s a lot of content in Free Blood’s music to be played around with. Get it now so you have the pleasure of saying “Oh, I had so Free Blood’s first EP ages before they were on Kitsuné” later on.

Daniel Gray From the moment he put the first Steps album into his stereo he knew he'd found his calling.
Email this author | All posts by Dan

Similar Posts