News FAMILY

You get the feeling that FAMILY don’t want you to have a nice time. Whilst the whole Witch House revolution a year or so ago might have come to nought but Balam Acab, it’s good to see that the lessons have been learnt from the spell and put to good use by someone. Still, even to anyone who can put the band into any kind of context might initially struggle with the band’s recordings.

A ‘slow burner’ is usually used to describe something that you’re not too fond of at first, but gradually wears you down after everyone has force fed you it for a couple of months, with being an ‘acquired taste’ following a similar line. FAMILY are neither of these things. Based in Hackney, their music is genuinely troubling and/or troubled, featuring the slowed-down beats that grabbed all those symbol heavy bands and doom laden, warped vocals. You’ve got to be of a very special temperament for the first listen to leave you feeling anything other than cold, the haunting use of samples and pasteurised beats more than enough to send a chill down the spine.

But then, it gnaws at you. It eats away. Something lurks just beneath the surface, a fact that reveals itself upon the inevitable repeat listens of their phenomenal FAM002 EP. Calling them pop songs might be bit much, but they’re not far off – they’ve simply been splintered and splayed across a different framework, butchered and re-imagined by an absolute nihilist. They’ll leave you perplexed, and brilliantly so.

FAM002 EP by FAMILY