Gentle Friendly - Night Tape EP

Nearly a year it’s taken for Gentle Friendly’s ‘Night Tape’ to be released. The tracks have been available for listens only on their MySpace and have been played and honed to perfection during their live shows. Now, you can take them home with you!

Their sound, a sound which is fast growing on the south east London scene, has been compared to that of New York’s Animal Collective or to Baltimore’s Dan Deacon. The Friendly duo deny being inspired by such artists though, as David (vox) explains: “I’d never heard of Animal Collective ‘til we’d been assimilated to them and Daniel played me some of their stuff.”

The EP is complied of four, now well known to some, tracks. Each one has its own distinctive riff, well, noise. ‘Five Girl Night’ melds voice and drums: as Daniel hits, David shrieks over the softer keys. ‘XXXmas’ plays more on David’s vocals. His voice drops low and heavy to recount the darker lyrics, ‘Raising the dead never worked’, before climbing back up to its more familiar, gentler ring. The start of ‘Sky Burial’ sounds like one of those electric pencil sharpners going at it, before breaking out into fervent banging and rhythm. Because that’s what Gentle Friendly is: harmony in ugly distortion. ‘Ride Symbols’ illustrates this as perfectly as is possible.

The release is limited to 500, so if you want a physical copy of it, you’re going to have to be quick and violent.