NAPE NECK – s/t

Description

“In the very first year of the doomed 2020s, the Leeds, UK-based art-punk trio Nape Neck made their debut with a self-titled/self-released cassette, featuring eight absolutely visceral tracks that held a mirror up to the anxieties and tensions of our hellish timeline and then shattered it on the ground. The five-song tape that followed it, 2022’s Look Alive, was an even more concise statement of intent, hitting like a head-on collision between the razor-edged clang and clamor of the Ex or Dog Faced Hermans and the untamed neo-no wave jabbing and scrabbling of the Scissor Girls and Erase Errata. This new LP collects all of the material from those two cassettes on vinyl for the first time (deservedly so; better late than never), and every single song is just as thrilling now as it was on first listen — if you weren’t paying attention then, you really need to be now. Bobby Glew’s guitar is strangled Andy Gill-style, splintering the taut, locked-in rhythms from bassist Claire Adams and drummer Kathy Gray with shards of serrated noise. Each member of the band contributes vocals, with their lines crossing and overlapping in a highly coordinated exchange of calls and responses. “No Platforming” and “Paperweight” communicate in a series of desperate shouts and clipped Morse code beats, while clattering mutant funk cowbell punctuates the spiraling scratch of “Demonstrations,” and “Aim Slow” tumbles through a rapid cycle of needling guitar and staccato bass throb, as “Warm Air” and “Look Alive” slash and burn like DNA if they’d been a Ron Johnson band. A total knockout — the first half of this decade belonged to Nape Neck, and chances are that the second half will be all theirs, too.” – Erika Elizabeth, Maximum Rocknroll/Domestic Depature Records/Collate

Compilation of tracks from the band’s two cassettes from 2020 and 2022 – Now re-mixed and re-mastered for vinyl.