The Sound of the Street (Ego War - Audio Bullys)

Member Name: funked_up DJ

Product:	Ego War - Audio Bullys
Date:	08/08/03 (73 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: fresh new sound

Disadvantages: not enough tracks!!

This is the sound of the suburbs, two young lads(Simon Franks and Tom Dinsdale) that have grown up raving to the basslines of hardcore, garage and house. At 22 and 24 they acknowledge the influence of The Specials, the Kinks and the Beatles as readily as they do Todd Edwards and Masters At Work.


Simon Franks and Tom Dinsdale's eponymous debut album is the lit fuse to set 2003 on fire: taking in everything from ska to UK garage, this is house music with the easy laddish charm of Squeeze or Madness, sub-bass beats that ask you to do more than just raise your hands. 'Real Life' sums up the same breathless explosion of urban pop energy of the Happy Mondays 'Wrote For Luck' or the Specials 'Too Much Too Young'. But wrapped up in basslines born out of lives misspent coming up in house and garage raves and coming down listening to pirates. Audio Bullys compel you to rake over the coals of new wave, ska and punk for reference points: it seems odd for a band who were both barely born in 1980. But name checking The Specials, Bob Dylan and the Beatles alongside Biggie Smalls and Method Man, Blondie and the Police next to early hardcore and jungle tunes.Their music tells micro sagas of young urban youth, street corners and party politics and the track 'I Go To Your House' might be the nearest they come to a love song, but they both deal with suburban dating politics and romance with a refreshingly real straight from the shoulder honesty.

When all around are proclaiming the death of the music industry, Audio Bullys are two kids still refreshingly hooked on both buying and making records. On taking a short lifetime's worth of music and recycling it into the freshest sound we'll get this year. Audio Bullys are the ghost of Ian Dury getting down at Twice As Nice, the sound of The Sex Pistols if they played the Ministry rather than the 100 Club.They are no London music industry lab rats: like 1977's Bromley Cont

ingent or the swaggering Berkshire and Essex crews that fuelled both rave's first flush of youth and drum & bass' explosion, Audio Bullys are the proof that the capital's suburbs have no need of 0207 area code trend obsession: this is music born of bored youth's enthusiasm. Doing for West London's less glamorous suburb's what Paul Weller did for Woking and lobbing the same grenades the Damned chucked at Croydon. Sometimes the suburbs just say it right with no help from those inside.

Heres the tracks:
Snake
100 Million
Way too Long
Real Life
We Dont Care
Face in the Cloud
The Things
Veteran
The Snow
I go to your Home
Hit the Ceiling
Ego War

Im not going to rate them so you have to go out and have a listen to each one for yourself, you wont be dissapointed, trust me.

Summary: