Here's a photo of a prepubescent Geoff Barrow thwacking a drumkit that practically engulfs his wiry frame. Whodathunk at the time whoever took said photo (and evidently neglected to employ the camera's redeye reduction feature) that the above kiddo would go on to establish one of Britain's most persistently progressive labels in the imperial guise of Invada and propel perhaps the country's bestest band? Irregardless, Invada this week released its 2012 sampler and here are our highlights...
First up: new one from the first lady of Invada, Anika, whose cover of Chromatics' In The City rattles along at a rigorous tempo that initially seems foreign to, and ultimately incompatible with her drawled baritone. However in pushing the cadence and looking to a more recent past than previously in search of a propulsive form of progress our intrigue is reenergised as we shuffle to a spectacularly twitchy and still-schizophrenic disco number.
Relocating to Barrow's beloved West Country and there sticking a little closer to brief are Bristol-based shoegazers The Fauns who, in keeping heads down and diligently labouring away on slapping psyched-out layers on the blank canvas that would otherwise be pure, simple and downright tedious silence, allow Alison Garner to wash their sound with light and impressionistic vocals. Sun Is Cruising sounds like the woozy inner workings of an aerophobe at lift off, and looks set to feature on their sophomore LP, expected early summer.
Shouting, guitar squealing, and pedal stomping like it's nineteen ninety-five, Thought Forms unleash another behemoth of a thing in Ghost Mountain as frail acoustics initially tiptoe about static drum framework, prior to a controlled, collective descent into the uproarious aforementioned chaos.
While Barrow himself has become entangled with the wirings of a new-fangled project with esteemed composer and previous Portishead collaborator Ben Salisbury – entitled DROKK and ignited by intrigue in Judge Dredd's hometown of Mega-City One – it's new Beak> material hacked out of the trio's forthcoming follow-up for preview that really grasps the imagination. Eggdog is slightly more hi-fi than previous endeavours, a warbling organ engendering the feel of a lost Bond classic bruised to a tragic shade of vermillion in the back-room of The Croft, clamorous brat-next-door drums and increasingly funereal accompaniment perpetuating this prevailing sense of the bloodcurdlingly slaughterous.
Yatton meanwhile, aired at last summer's Portishead-curated I'll Be Your Mirror, is perhaps the pick of the bunch: a riveting slab of mesmeric thunderclap spasm, it hinges on a compulsively rousing analogue quop that's engrossingly metronomic to the point of the motorised.
This year's Invada Sampler also features wonderfully unorthodox hip-hop from Katalyst, deranged and DIY francophonic proto-funk from The Veees, and Scarlet Rascal & The Trainwreck's startling debut effort, The Haunting. There's brightness located within all this Invada-rooted darkness and in the era of the multifarious mixtape, here's one in all but designation that's as formidable as any.
