Crack

So whenever the ‘industry’ claims to have found the next big thing, alarm bells start ringing. Yes, Egyptian Hip Hop have great hair, they also have great high-tops. Oh and the songs are quite good too.

Heartbreaker, Thursday’s weekly live indie-pop-live music foray at The Start the Bus, are hosting tonight’s proceedings and have been rewarded with an immaculately attired and large crowd to watch these young chaps do their thing.

So maybe these 17-year-old scuzz-grunge pop nerds justify the hype? It’s probably true Egyptian Hip Hop are too cool to watch ‘Skins’, they’d probably watch French art-house cinema instead and it shows in their incredibly suave tunes, which range from math rock and melodic noise to, ermmm, something approximating psy trance.

They launch straight into an unpolished onslaught of rambling guitars, indecipherably atonal vocals, most possibly about teenage angst and girls and exceptionally dynamic melodies. Even though Egyptian Hip Hop are prone to some long-winded guitar-wanking, they play a tight set brimming with inventive, colourful and refreshingly chirpy freak-pop.

The drummer, who is sporting the ‘it’ accessory of the season, a Guantanamo Bay style bag over the head, is full of vigour and vitality, which especially shows on first single Rad Pit (bless them).

It’s a lush melodic gem, bursting with the youthful energy of wide-eyed teenage boys, who have just discovered that twiddling the knobs on a vintage keyboard is way cooler than playing on their brother’s X-Box.

Rad Pitt is an odd marrying of somewhat nostalgic Beach Boys, with a highly contemporary selection of electronic bleeps and syncopated off-beat drumming. More importantly, the single showcases a musical maturity that betrays the band’s age.
Egyptian Hip Hop might have just about enough stage presence to fill my mum’s kitchen, but their songs are as unpolished and scruffy as their looks. But that’s the beauty. You can tell that underneath the often clumsy, hyperactive and mostly noisy surface, lays great melodic splendour. The enticingly dreamy quality of set closer Heavenly is superb. If The XX and Chapel Club are making ‘doom pop’ massive right now, Egyptian Hip Hop are already on to the next big thing ‘happy grunge’. In your face Kurt.

Second band on the night are the equally ‘scene’ Is Tropical. Half of Is Tropical used to play in the now defunct Libertines-esque, South London squad-riot-troupe - Ratty Rat Rat, but they have since left the squad, cleaned up their act and thankfully their songs too.

Presenting the indie elite of Bristol with a literally tropical mixture of ridiculously playful lo-fi, obscure Tetris-sounding tunes and reverb-heavy hissed out/blissed out vocals, they showcase their unique brand of laid-back pop. Each track of the unfortunately short set is a winner, creating an animated atmosphere somewhere between a warehouse fluo rave and a crack party.

Demos I’ll Take My Chances and Seasick Mutiny are gems in the rough and one can only hope that there is more where they came from.



Tune: I'll Take My Chances (Is Tropical)
Tune: Rad Pitt (Egyptian Hip Hop)

http://www.myspace.com/egyptianhiphop
http://www.myspace.com/istropical
Words: Linda Aust

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