Surfin' Pleasures is the latest album by Japanese Surf punks The Routes, this time round they are going Surfing with Joy Division, for this album The Routes are Toru Nishimuta, Bryan Styles, Chris Jack and Andrew Shartle.
The album opens with Love Will Tear Us Apart played like the entire album in a surf rock style, like the Ventures have gone goth, with the guitars having a real Link Wray flavour to them.
A Means To An End speeds up Peter Hooks bassline adding what sounds like formation dance move guitars, they wander forwards and back, bringing light to the originally bleak music.
Digital has a surfside dance feel to it, the flourishes of guitar working around the traditional drum pattern, taking this to vastly different places to the original.
These Days has a more late-night feel to it, like they are ready for one more drink before staggering home. This almost feels more like The Shadows.
Passover sounds surprisingly up-beat like they haven't been drowned in the red sea, or fled oppression, but are looking forward to eating Matzo's, love the flourishes of jangly guitar and the bass descents.
Atmosphere is nice and slow, perfect to sing along in a very Robert Gordon style, this sounds perfect as a Stingray style surf rocker.
They turn Transmission into a wondrous flight of Surfing fantasy, driven by the drums the guitars go off and I just want to keep on dance dance dancing to the radio live transmission.
Ice Age is sped up into a quite spry rumble of a tune perfect for some totally splenetic dance moves.
She's Lost Control sounds totally in control, guitar runs get us all in a spin, ready to lose the plot at a moment's notice, when the main theme comes in you could easily clap along with them.
Isolation sounds rather poppy in this surfing treatment, it has rarely sounded more upbeat than this.
Dead Souls has some very jaunty Ventures style surf guitar making this almost feel like you'd want to do a jig to it, it gets good and twangtastic in ways that made me smile at the audacity of it.
The album closes with a rather thoughtful version of Ceremony that gets to the imperious heart of this classic song with carefully picked guitar getting deep into the heart of what made this song so wonderful in the first place.
Find out more at https://www.facebook.com/theroutes https://www.reverbnation.com/theroutes https://soundflatrecords.de/topsy-turvy-records-releases https://www.discogs.com/release/31439033-The-Routes-Surfin-Pleasures
