Demos

Shuffle - What'sthatyougot

Chris Helsby 00/00/0000

Rating: 3/5

This is proper quirk-pop. Shuffle are from London and have being doing the circuit and picking-up quite a handful of the sort of accolades that are bestowed upon promising new bands. This is their second E.P, released independently.

It starts with the kind of drums that DJ Shadow would sample, big jazz/funk/hip-hop rhythms. Then what follows are tunes that sound like Beck if he was lost in some weird, 1930s speakeasy. Samples of horn sections are mixed-in with Pixies guitars and distorted, de-tuned radio vocals.

The weirdness takes over a bit too much. There aren't any decent tunes here, nothing you can whistle along to. You're left thinking about how strange the record is, and that you liked it, certainly. But you can't remember how it went.

For a band who claim to be 'the band press officers love to hate' they have a clutch of 'best-new band' awards that would make any press officer cream themselves. Shuffle are weird and odd and they stand out bigtime, especially against the backdrop of so much post-Libertines stuff coming out of London at the moment. But being weird ain't enough on its own.

http://www.shuffle.info/