All The Best Tapes are back, friends. Real back. Self-categorized under the tongue-in-cheek genre of ‘thrash jazz’ (about as tongue-in-cheek as ‘math rock’ – Ed.), the Stoke quartet are ‘waking the egg’ in their latest video, ‘Perfect Hibernation’.
In this, their post-postmodern take on reality game show culture (possibly – Ed.), All The Best Tapes appear as contestants in the heavily acclaimed and heavily fictitious TV show Wake The Egg!. As the game show progresses, the band overcome riddles and clues set by the show’s host, guy Ledouche. We watch with bitten nails and Ferrero Rochere breath as the band traverse the backstreets of Stoke to locate the eponymous Egg and wake him from his slumber by filling the Egg Meter in record time. Overall, it’s kinda like Amazing Race with albumen.
Woken eggs aside, this is one of the beefiest and loudest math-thrash-jazz-punk-noise rock tracks we’ve heard this year. It’s choc full of twists, turns, up, downs, twirls, pirouettes, 19-hit combos and kickflip mctwists on special bar. ‘Perfect Hibernation’ is a kid overdosing on packets of sherbert fizz, marauding across the city on an all-day train pass, wreaking havoc and seldom apologizing. Nothing but flare here.
‘Perfect Hibernation’ appears on Perfect Hibernation/Calle De La Cruces Double A-Side Single, out now on Sunbird Records. You can nab it up right about here.