New Leeds label Dance To The Radio provided us with an absoute embarrassment of riches with their eponymously-titled compilation of Leeds and area bands t'other week. A truly gobsmacking collection of the West Yorkshire's weird and truly wonderful, it made it abundantly clear that the great city is positively seething with creativity and invention at present.
And now, two of the parent album's most promising outfits are married on the label's first split 7" release. Both are very different, but equally worthy of attention. FORWARD, RUSSIA!'s "Nine" is straight outta Rough Trade's "Post Punk 01" compendium, and makes out like the clattering, exuberant and spikily attractive post-punk it surely is. Unlike the current crop of Futureheads/ Bloc Party disciples, "Nine" reminds your reviewer of the likes of unfairly-forgotten thorns in the side like Big Flame and Death By Milkfloat and sound naive and slightly unfinished, which in this case is undoubtedly a good thing.
This Et Al, meanwhile, are another mug of steamin nettle tea altogether. Like their seething DTTR compilation offering "Catscan," "He Shoots Presidents" is densely layered and drowning in molten, white hot guitars of the variety ....And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead would surely approve of. Not least in the intensity stakes. Nonetheless, their IS room for light and shade in TEA'S warped and explosive world as well, plus an inherent sense of drama, which kicks in to great effect as the track ends with the sheer clinical abruptness of a bullet to the skull.
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All of which is probably an overly-melodramatic way of saying this split 7" rocks with typically individualistic abandon. Dance To The Radio are operating at a frequency that demands attention from all the discerning out there. Their profile and influence can only grow in the future.
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