The Storm Bugs Best Before 2027
Bandcamp DL
Philip Sanderson and Steven Ball first started making music as Storm Bugs in 1978. creating DIY pop and tape collage, putting out cassettes on their own Snatch Tapes label until 1981. Using old reel-to-reel machines, scratched/ locked groove records, fuzzy radio recordings, poetic half-spoken lyrics warped by tape manipulations, their work tapped into a surreal and distinctly British sort of gloom, laced with dry humour. In 2002 they revived the project with The Bugs Are Back EP, and in 2017 with Certified Original &Vintage Fakes.
Now arrives Best Before 2027. Like their earlier work, the album sounds as though it was made with rickety recording gear, only now the aesthetics are early DIY digital - endearingly lumpy DAW production, preset reverbs and hyperactive, babbling vector synths. Opener "Table Matters-la reference to their 1980 EP of the same name) is a disoriented stomp pinned in place by a monotone rhythmic vocal: Dull, bored, numb, grey, frazzled, sitting in a ditch/A hat, and a bottle, and a creeping sense of dread". "European Coffee Lounge" continues the sardonic mood, boasting a ridiculously catchy chorus framed by churning, spasmodic synth sequences.
"Syntax" is a highlight, seven plus minutes of chilled synthpop with a softly crooning voice wrapping itself around lines like Cadge•gloak, curtal, palliard, patrico, jackman,whip-jack, drummer, click track", lending the words a ridiculous erotic charge. Keeping with the wordy theme, there's a loose and lumpy reading of "Leary Mann from The Vulgar Tongue 118571 by Ducange Anglicus, which works surprisingly well as an ode to contemporary British masculinity. "Pigeon In My Pocket" is a stranger, speedy muddle of noisy electronics and semi-nightmarish post-punk poetry.
The best gag on the album is "Generic Ambient Music", twinkling digital bells and a Vocodered voice cooing, "There's years, literally years, of it, that can be streamed online". Cheeky, clever and a silly bargain for £l on Bandcamp. Go get it.
Leah Kardos
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