Ok, ok, so I've got a little bit behind on my reviews of late, I admit it - I've got a list of excuses as long as your arm why: not enough time, too much work, my cat ate them, etc, etc - I won't bore you with them all now, let's just get on with the reviews before I find another excuse to put them off.

Back somewhere deep in the mists of time, LA's Moving Units released their debut album 'Dangerous Dreams', much anticipated by anyone who'd managed to get hold of a copy of the EP that had proceeded it a couple of years beforehand.

Sadly for MU, the musical landscape has shifted in the intervening months, and their brand of taught punk-funk is no longer de rigueur, having been superseded by filthy London punk kids with peculiar haircuts and badge smothered blazers.

The album itself is a little on the patchy side, and at least two tracks too long, but when they get it right, they're untouchable, even by their much heralded contemporaries The Rapture and Radio 4. 'Between Us and Them' is catapulted along by an elastic bassline and sneering vocals, while 'Available's thumping metronomic rhythm compels your feet to twitch in time.
www.movingunits.net

Another band suffering from the perils of our fast shifting musical landscape are Chicks on Speed. A couple of years ago I would have been salivating over a new CoS release like a hungry dog left unwatched in a butcher's shop, but following a disappointing second album and the dismantling of the electroclash scene of which they had been seen almost as spiritual leaders, 'Press The Spacebar', featuring new backing band The No-Heads, arrives to a general air of indifference that would have at one time been unthinkable.

'The Household Song' gets the album off to a promising start, with The Chicks ripping into societal expectations of modern women to a sparse backing track that allows the vocals to take centre stage, and for a moment it's just like the old days. 'Mitte Bitte', adds in some choppy guitar riffs to the mix to great effect, and 'Class War' is a glorious mess of shouty sloganeering. So far, so good then, even if much of the songs have been covering similar ground to their fantastic debut 'Chicks on Speed Will Save Us All', but things sadly take a turn for the worse, with the sloppy 'Culture Vulture (parts two & three)', and 'Ten Thousand Years' which sounds like it was thrown together in five minutes (and not in a good way).

The album continues in a similarly hit and miss fashion, with highlights in the form of 'History Will Outlive Us' and the overdriven guitars of 'Fuzzy Nipple', and further troughs in waste of plastic tracks like 'Hand In My Pocket' and the pointless "Look at us, we're subversive!" smut of 'Wax My Anus", which sounds like the Scissor Sisters recorded on a cheap 4-track, but there's nothing here that will thrust CoS into the spotlight which they once commanded.
www.chicksonspeed.com

Fortunately, veteran indie space rockers Six by Seven can never go out of fashion, because they've never been in fashion - it's rare to see a band of such quality persevere for so in the face of such great media indifference, and despite a continued lack of column inches, the departure of several band members, and being dropped by previous label Mantra, they continue to soldier on, releasing not one, but two albums on their own newly formed Saturday Night Sunday Morning imprint.

First up is 'Left Luggage at the Peveril Hotel', which rather worryingly is made up of the tracks that were left out of their disappointing third album 'The Way I feel Today' - according to the album sleeve, "Some of the songs were deemed unsuitable, others were mixed differently, and some just didn't fit in terms of space and content... They are, we think, worthy of an album compilation, either that or they'd just sit around on dat tapes and hard drives... that we think, would be a bit of a waste... and besides, we need your cash." Honest to a fault then, although it's still not enough to allay my fears before slipping the cd into my stereo.

However, when I finally plucked up the courage to press play, I was pleasantly surprised - there are some fantastic tracks here, admittedly with a fair share of filler too, but there are plenty of songs that would have improved on the original album. Number one contender is 'What's Wrong With Understanding', a soaring plea from Chris Olley, complete with stratospheric guitars and strings. There are also a number of heavier guitar tracks, reliant on the sort of gargantuan repetitive riffs that punctuated some of my favourite moments on earlier albums - opener 'Around's twisty guitars could be used for mass hypnosis, while recent single 'Clouds' is a straightforward chorus thrash, complete with wiry guitar solo.

Of course it's not all good news, the cd falls into a mid-album slump from which it never really recovers, and 'Ready For You Now' is a non-event of a song, while 'I'll Take My Chances' sounds worryingly like early Charlatans, and 'Bring Down The Government' never quite fulfils the promise shown in its opening bars; but even these are better than the poorer moments on 'The Way I Feel Today'.

While not quite satisfying enough to be considered a 'proper' album, 'Left Luggage...' does give a fascinating insight into the thought processes that go into selecting tracks for an album, and leaves the listener scratching their head and wondering how on earth they managed to come up with the original selection when some of these were on offer.

The real follow up to 'The Way I Feel Today', '04', has arrived largely unnoticed, other than by the small pocket of loyal followers that have been with the band since the beginning, which is a shame as it shows a band rediscovering their freedom on their own label, and starting to show the form that had made them one of the UK's most underrated treasures.

'Sometimes I Feel Like..' must be a potential single, floating along on a fuzzy keyboard motif in the verse before exploding in a caustic wave of searing guitars - it's the best Six by Seven song since 'The Closer You Get'. The previous holder of this accolade, pre-album single 'Bochum' is also present, and has lost none of its anthemic charm in the months since it was released, and other released tracks 'Catch the Rain' and 'Ocean' are both decent tracks, driven by stomping drum beats, the later reminiscent of Jesus & Mary Chain.

There are one or two hiccups - a couple of pointless instrumental interludes, and the weak 'Ready for You Now', but in general this album is yet another demonstration of why Six by Seven are far more deserving of magazine covers than celebrity junkies and their associated hangers on.
www.sixbyseven.co.uk

Still, occasionally the mags get it right, and the most recent example was the acclaim received by New Cross' DIY scene (or anti-scene rather - sorry Caffy, slip of the keyboard!). Amongst the key protagonists in the sudden explosion in this previously unfashionable corner of South East London, is Angular Records, the brainchild of two men called Joe, one of whom is the guitarist in The Violets.

Sadly, Joe's band seem to be suffering the same fate faced by similar DIY legends The Delgados when Bis, Arab Strap and Mogwai suddenly came to prominence from their Chemikal Underground label, while they remained largely unacknowledged. This time around it has been Angular affiliates Bloc Party and Art Brut grabbing the headlines, while The Violets have continued to toil around the smaller venues of the capital, to a small but growing band of loyal followers.

And as in the case of The Delgados, those who have yet to discover them are missing out on something special, for The Violets at their best are at least the equal of their more celebrated contemporaries, and will shortly release 'Mirror Mirror' (out on April 18th) to prove this to the world.

'Mirror Mirror' is the band's first single, following a split release with drummer Andrew's other band The Swear on Filthy Little Angels, and tracks on both of the now legendary Angular compilations, and manages to eclipse these earlier efforts with Alexis' eerie, ethereal vocals, Joe's spiky guitars and Andrew's powerful drumming - hell, he even fits in a proper drum fill halfway through. As always The Violets keep it short and sharp, and it's all over in three anxious minutes.

Rather more restrained in its delivery, b-side 'Hiero' mixes up similar ingredients to create a sparse, edgy track, but lacks the pulling power of its predecessor. However, final track 'Hard Hammer' is something special, taking the quiet-loud formula to extremes, with an almost excruciatingly slow creeping verse suddenly jerking into life as if the band have just attached jump leads to its nipples and lurch into a jerky spasm of liquid riffage and pounding drums before grinding to a halt just as quickly and repeating the whole glorious experience again.
www.theviolets.co.uk

Reviews by Paul Madden - keep your eyes peeled for part two next week.
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