Playlouder - Music is the Network

Not being accustomed to hanging around in sticky basements, I hardly know what to expect when venturing, for the first time, down the steps into what lies beneath the World’s End. It's one of those moments where someone tells you to trust them, and you allow yourself to fall backwards, and then you hear a phone ringing, and they say “Oh, just a minute…” but it’s too late. 

The stage is surrounded by a sort of balcony, so that the pit in front of it is an actual pit, not just the bit in front of the stage. I live in constant fear of contact with ruffians, so it’s fortunate for me that it’s a sparsely populated venue, and that if any ‘moshing’ ensues I’ll have plenty of chance to make my escape. 

Rollo Tomasi shot Kevin Spacey’s dad, in a film, except he didn’t, because he doesn’t exist – not even in the film. The name stands for the perfect criminal. Like Kaiser Soze, or Carmen San Diego, and they don’t exist either. If the perfect crime is playing intelligent, eclectic, inventive music to clusters of impatient, mouthy scenesters, and not getting bottled, then Rolo Tomassi are guilty as charged. 

Their music sprawls out like a patchwork quilt of influences: from post-hardcore (dare we say spazzcore?) to death jazz, moments of Mogwaiesque post rock to Iron Monkey sludge, with a bit of Nintendocore thrown in for good measure, this Sheffield super group are a band invented to confound critics and, consequently, annoy their readers. Sorry. 

What’s most impressive here isn’t the reanimated, reclaimed rhythms, the Hades-hellcat screams of the pixie-cute singer, (giving Angela Gossow a run for her money), nor the self-assured strut of a remarkably young band making remarkably mature music, it’s the fact that against the odds, the songs are actually pretty decent specimens in their own right. Everyone should see this band.