Cotton Candy/Storm O.K. by Keroscene (Single)

A track that’ll have indie kids hanging on its next move.

They’re just a year into their career but Keroscene are already writing with the assurance of noise-rock’s most accomplished veterans

ondon four-piece noise-rockers Keroscene announce their arrival with debut double A-side single Cotton Candy/Storm O.K., and bring a “multicoloured melancholy” to the genre. Having formed just a year ago the band are still green behind the ears. They waste little time, though, in displaying a potential that will have their peers turning emerald with envy.

Opener Cotton Candy opens with foreboding electronics, hinting towards a funeral trance that would have ravers clambering into their graves. This though is merely the backdrop upon which to build layers of sound, with a ringing post-punk riff and rolling drums joining the fray and David Troster’s breathy, floaty, vocals turning Cotton Candy into a track that’ll have indie kids hanging on its next move. That move is into a deep and tonal shoegaze, the sort that Ride would have played if they’d been born in Seattle.

This grungey take on shoegaze is followed by Storm O.K. which recalls the work of the brilliant Canadian duo No Joy, only with added bleeps and an even greater sense of foreboding. The theme continues throughout the track, as the band seek to add ever more grungey texture and gain entrance to the My Bloody Valentine school of dense pop, via Nine Inch Nails’ gothic take on Joy Division’s Dead Souls. Storm O.K. ends by closing with a segment whose pulse is near Krautrock, before an abrupt bleep stops the track dead.

To have developed a sound of such density in just a year is intimidating in its impressiveness, with Keroscene already holding the poise of a band much longer in the tooth. The quality of songwriting evident too hints at a band who will use noise-rock not as a genre for their own backs, but a canvas upon which they will build ever more towering works.

Verdict: Extremely promising noise-rock

Damien Girling

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