The Midnight Sun EP

This ep is amazing. I've been looking for something like this for such a very very long time. Blistering heavy beats. Screaming analog synth leads. Treble, treble, treble. This is for fans of early 90s drone. The fuzz of Flying Saucer Attack is there. The drone of Spacemen 3 is there. The beats are truely Screen Vinyl Image alone.... something brand new. Pounding. It invades your ear drums in ways that you welcome... passionately. I'm lucky that I live in the same city Screen Vinyl Image resides so I've been able to see them live. And, wow. As insane as this ep is, they blow holes through concrete walls during a live set. It's been a very long time since I heard something and responded, "What is THAT?! Where did that come from?!" It's good. Very very good.

The Midnight Sun displays a wide range of influences, making it all the more impressive that Screen Vinyl Image composed an original, complex sound that stands on its own. SVI has taken a queue from the dreamy, fluid riffs of '60's surf rock and from '80s electro punk to inform today's framework of distortion and noise characterizing the current nu-gaze scene. In short, they have assembled tracks that are at home played on the fickle dance floor as well as the unforgiving indie rock venues. They are everybody's secret crush.

Screen Vinyl Image makes me wish that more bands had the chops to mesh genres in the subtle, brilliant way they do. Cross-pollination as a term falls short of the almost archeological method SVI has employed to bring together such disparate elements as early New Wave, stripped down Shoegaze, funk baselines, film scores, and even classic television like the Twilight Zone as inspirations. In the end you are rewarded with a sound that is sexy, reminiscent, and utterly new.