VENN RECORDS 8th September 2023
This is unique. All about the beat and made out of colliding sounds in a whirl around the listener’s head. Beats are bashing drums and sampled digital booms, hollow tub thumps, synthesised squawks, sequenced thuds. Add blurting, urgent vocals, bored, fed up vocals, angry words from a feminist perspective and this is a manifesto for a new sound, a refreshed attitude, something healthy and new. Yes, there is guitar; of course there’s guitar, but this isn’t a guitar band because the guitar is providing a lot of the synthesised sounds and rhythm. It’s the best of both worlds.
An electro / punk trio from Brighton, CLT DRP have done the proper punk thing and used accessible technology to create the new and push ideas forward, not least making the electric guitar into an even more versatile instrument. There’s a lot of noise, a lot of speedy stuff but ‘M.U.T.M.’ shows the band can do the calmer approach with semi-whispered vocals about masturbation subordinate to the mutant disco beat.
This is their second album and it carries right on from the first, making the personal political and vice versa. The band are angry, amused, puzzled, vexed and tell us in lyrics that are to the point and channel how they see the world from a Feminist and a Queer perspective. They are radical but maybe less so than the music, which is heavy but made from a complex pattern of interlocking waves, yet allowing for raw energy and an on-the-pulse yelping delivery that reminds me of Crass and their fellow travellers. The album recording venue even sounds Crass-like – put together on a farm with home-cooked food in proper anarcho-punk style.
For heaviness with inventiveness and fun, this is your one-stop.
Ross McGibbon