Vvolves - Vvolves

Welsh quartet VVolves are creators of brisk, sharp and jittery electro-tinged punk, the kind of music you might imagine making if you found yourself in the early morning, following a night of no sleep whatsoever with nothing but a battered old guitar, a vat of excessively strong black coffee and a creeping sense of paranoia for company.

Their debut EP ‘Vvolves’ showcases the band’s schizophrenic tendencies in all their kooky glory. Opening track ‘Birds In Berlin’ is a whirling dervish of a track, calling to mind Bloc Party at their most edgy extreme, a barrage of alarm-wailing guitars offset by intense spiky drum crashes. ‘Sailing From Youth’ brings the pace down a notch from frantic bouncing off the walls to more moderate pogoing, with menacing scratchy guitars and lurching melodies constantly tripping you up.

‘Wolves’ involves vocals mangled through one of those Cher-style tone-pitch vocoder type machines, which instantly ratchets up the annoyance factor to 11. Having said this, it redeems itself because you can imagine yourself careening around your local indie disco dancefloor quite merrily to this. ‘Vogue’ - vocoder still in evidence, alarmingly - is another of those immediately danceable electro rock clashes, defying category as it flips deftly bewteen post punk spindly guitar riffs to pulsating dancefloor trance climaxes.

Finding it impossible to keep still for a second, VVolves are pretty much undefinable, and all the more exciting because of this. You get the sense they could spiral off in any off-kilter direction at any moment and you’d be well up for going along with them, safe in the knowledge that it’s guaranteed to be a memorable, exhilarating adventure.