Flamingods - Sun

Mystery Jets without the 70s pop? Yeasayer on too much Jägermeister? Who are Flamingods? Judging on their debut album, ‘Sun’, they’re certainly a pretty weird bunch.

The London-based band take the crown for 2013’s most innovative and experimental release to date. It might be a little early to say ‘most innovative record of 2013’, but their equally frantic, free and frivolous approach to making music warrants the accolade.

Fearlessly mixing tribal, psychedelic and tropical sounds, the five-piece stitch together a blissfully bright hippie quilt of kaleidoscopic musical beauty. It helps to be in the right mood to listen to this abstract but strangely intriguing ‘piece of crazy’, but the amalgamation of tender steel drums, trippy Casio solos and indecipherable lyrics can’t help but make you admire their non-conformist stance.

First single ‘Quesso’ is a drum tour de force with enough sparkly keyboards to make any dancefloor explode, while ‘Mountain Hut’ shows the band at their melodic best - a track fit for a game show theme or Carnival. The Mayan rave of ‘Xipe Topec’ will really push you over the edge of weirdness while simultaneously make you appreciate in how many different shapes and sound music can come.

Flamingods’ crazy synth ruckus perfectly captures their ‘alien but accessible’ mantra. ‘Sun’ is an entirely different listening experience than your average indie-pop, and let’s all be thankful for it.