Ikara Colt is what happens when kids have instruments and don't give a fuck about selling records. The Simon Cowell end of the industry (which there's room for, before you start) wouldn't touch this shit with a cattle prod, so thank fuck for funny little labels like Fantastic Plastic, who've done the good thing and not only put this record out, but put some cash into it as well. Geezers! You be happy, fucker, 'cos right from the off this is guitar noise to please even the most disillusioned (of which your humble hack was, briefly, a member). In our day it was Carter and the Senseless Things and Nirvana and all that, now you lucky young swine have the Colt and the Matchbox and the Parkies. And as they were there first with the plastic, the Colt are the Daddies.
This is a smart LP. From the opening chunder of 'One Note', a mean bass riff and some grade A wittering, their throb is pure and their thrum sweet. Ikara Colt have been accused of having "no tunes". On first listen you might agree. By third, you're humming along (if you're not hopping up and down like a bum with his feet on fire that is). Fifth you're hooked. It's all deceptively simple - hammer riffs out of the twangy instruments, tear life and death from the tubs, shout and mutter and pontificate over the top. It's punk, basically, but punk with the hindsight that being born in the late seventies/early eighties brings. Punk with some new ideas, a new way of making noises with old tools. 'City Of Glass' sounds like heroin comedowns on the street in the rain. 'Sink Venice' is the ceiling being torn from the venue. 'Chat And Business' is piss and shit and aching tendons, a manifesto that says Just Fucking Do It.
Then it does.
Adam Alphabet
