As we move slowly through time 2020’s been a bastard, with a lack of live music having a definite effect on mental health and wellbeing, not just on us the listeners or viewers, but on the musicians who’ve kept us sane with their craft for generations.

In this fucked up Tory government’s view, who all probably play Phil Collins on auto repeat, music sits sadly at the back of their agenda, alongside theatre and the arts in general. Lets see the next social media campaign with BoJo the performing chimp or our Dom Cummings retraining as human beings some time soon! They just don’t know it yet.

Without live music we find ourselves (or at least I do searching for new stuff to listen to,) or at the very least pushing our own musical boundaries, which needn’t include prog rock or Coldplay or Phil Collins unless you’re a Tory of course, none of these belong in any sane persons collection.

Where am I going with this? About a week ago this beauty landed in my inbox from Daley towers and it really made me sit up and listen!!! Proto Idiot in fairness are all over the place!!! But in a good way.

As I’m trying to put thoughts together as I listen to the opening tracks my own thoughts are bouncing all over the place as to how I would describe them, they’re tagged as garage rock, but in fairness that’s a huge category of music that ran through the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s 80’s, 90’s, 00’s up to present times.

And I suppose that’s my conundrum with this baby as I move through the opening tracks I can’t quite place it, but influences do come forward, for example “I like the Way” could almost be the Beatles, whereas “Replace” has more of any allegiance to Wire’s post punk sound however brief it is!!! “Mountain” has so much going on, you could almost call it industrial Prog? (have I just invented a new genre?) the repetitive vocals over the jangling guitar taking it into places I’ve never heard before.

“ Head straight” takes a more standard garage rock dive into the music and stands out as one of my faves on the LP.

“Well” has elements of Wonk Unit, elements of early Barrett led Pink Floyd but ultimately it’s a bridge into “It’s no good” an early garage rock review of the 60’s sound that came out of California, all tied together with a post punk thread.

When “Enjoy yourself” kicks back in with that Post Punk vibe, you can’t help but smile and your back in the day. LP closer “Try to be good” takes you back into that 60’s Barrett era Floyd sound, again one of the LP’s standouts for yours truly.

There are so great ideas in this LP when you dig underneath the sound, it’ll definitely take you out of your comfort zone, but that’s a good thing.

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Author: Nev Brooks