aaamusic | On 31, Oct 2011

Warning: this single contains strobe lighting. And the best use of the cowbell since Daft Punk is Playing at My House. Flash Fiktion’s new release Artificial Colours is an epileptic piece of electro-pop, and has a chorus that’s so profanely catchy it’s almost gospel. This is what The Rapture would sound like if they were British: refreshingly acid. The remix that comes with the single turns it into an almost Stone Roses-meets-My Bloody Valentine trip and, you know, it’s awesome.

B-side Ulcers has the same impact, but in a decidedly more Death-From-Above-1979 fashion. Cascading guitars come at you with sweaty energy contoured by a sickly scenery – ‘Catharatts grow on your eyes’ is one line of a lyric that’s, honestly, too brilliant to be made out completely. All you can tell is that there are visions of viruses entwining in a potentially lethal cocktail. Artificial Colours, and, I suspect, the record it’s taken from (Flash Fiktion, self-titled debut) confirm a personal theory that sometimes only South London can come to the rescue of a sinking genre…

 

Chiara Amoretti