Disco, Blisters & A Comedown

Joe Holyoake’s driving the pop buggy this week, and he’s got SUMMINK TO SAY

 


Oh look, we can hear you say, another 10 years since… article. Well, yeah. There’s going to be a lot of these, because a) mid-twenties journalists like reminiscing about the halcyon days when they didn’t have to pay rent and could fit into a Topman XS and b) the state of the world in 2017, can you really blame us?

Anyway, we thought we’d latch onto the 10-year anniversary of the start of Skins. For a lot of people, it brings back sticky memories of out-of-control parties with hordes of teenagers stealing an absent parent’s wedding dress. But, for a 12-year-old living in the countryside, this obviously wasn’t the case. However, we did miraculously have broadband, MySpace and a copy of NME popping through the letterbox every Wednesday, so the music of the Skins era still managed to permeate out of London.

The one genre that goes fingerless-gloved hand-in-hand with Skins is Nu-Rave, a label that people actively avoided at the time, and one that no-one is going to be resurrecting anytime soon. But, we think that it’s had a bit of a bad rap and that some of it still stands up a decade on. What’s more, the whole ethos behind it of going out dancing and dressing up in ironic jewellery, well that could be applied to the London gay scene today, amiright?

So, with that in mind, here’s some of the best Skins-era Nu-Rave.

 


Late Of The Pier – Bathroom Gurgle

Late Of The Pier only released one album (although their singer released an album with Soft Hair last year), but there were enough ideas on there alone for about another four or five. Bathroom Gurgle still sounds like three songs mangled together, with its madly operatic guitar, warped synths and indecipherable lyrics.

 


CSS – Off The Hook

Nu-Rave goes on holiday! CSS stood for Cansei de Ser Sexy (or ‘Tired of Being Sexy’ in English) and have a singer called Lovefoxxx. They’re exactly the sort of camp spectacle we love at QX. Their debut album was full of scuzzy guitars and jarring translations, and Off The Hook is the sort of floor-filling banger that gets played at Douchebag.

 


Klaxons – Atlantis to Interzone

Klaxons’ debut album ‘Myths of the Near Future’ was the Thriller of nu-rave, reaching out to the mainstream, winning the Mercury Prize, and selling by the neon bucketload. Atlantis to Interzone is the best song on there; all sirens, frantic verses with lyrics about futurist novels and the same ‘DJ!’ you could do on the Casio keyboard in music lessons at school. A sweaty mess.

 


Crystal Castles – Alice Practice

The Canadian band performed this song live on an episode of Skins, with Sid breaking down about his Dad’s death to Tony in the middle of the crowd. This is another one that sounds uniquely abrasive today, a lurid vomit of computer sounds and thumping bass.

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