EP: AMR PRODUCTIONS / ARGU3 (Dv8 Music Collective)
This is the second in Dv8’s community-based label project delivering creative and media training for young people, helping them realise real goals like club nights, magazine publishing and record releases. Whether the urban narrative on AMR’s Living The Dream and AMR’s Live My Life is more hopeful homage to US hip hop than true personal experience is kind of irrelevant. Both tracks, with their various remixes, belie the inherent inexperience of their creators and would easily hold their own among Tim Westwood’s box of joints or jams or whatever the prick calls them. Hopefully all concerned here will take this further, they certainly have it in them. (NC)

SINGLE: ARGUMENT ABOUT YELLOW Some Grips Slip (Broken World)
A lush mix of cut-up electronica, acoustic and orchestral sounds, loosely from the Lemon Jelly school with hints of Hot Chip vocals, this is sublime a single as we’ve heard for a while – like an aural coat hanger jammed in your mouth, you can’t help smiling. The remix at the end even manages to improve on the original, which is no mean feat. The fact that they’re releasing it on their own label might well be their own choice, but if not it’s no surprise that the music industry’s on its arse with its head up it for good measure. Really, really good. (NC)

DEMO: COUNSELLOR FINLEY (myspace.com/counsellorfinley)
With a self-professed agenda of accessibility-avoidance, this noisy upstart three-piece make the rather bold claim of offering an alternative for people who want to see and hear genuine music. Lofty pretensions indeed, but on spinning through the four tracks here they might well have a point. Dark and heavy rock with meat-ripping riffs is interspersed with prog breakdowns and mellow punctuations, all conspiring to deliver a genuinely interesting and promising introduction to the band. (NC)

EP: CURLY HAIR My League (Toy Soldier)
Curly Hair is a perfect boy-girl duo featuring Benjamin Gregory of post-punk’s Everyone To The Anderson. This is a big departure from the aforementioned outfit’s take on Fugazi-fuelled noise assault, similar to the move from no-label whiskey to a sweetly refined blend. This debut EP reflects their DIY lifestyle, recorded between playing gigs at house parties touring with Klaus Says Buy The Record and busking in Berlin. At the time of writing it’s available via MySpace and already on heavy rotation at XFM. Curly Hair do anti-folk the way it was intended – fun, pretty and full of flowers, the perfect hot toddy to a hard day at the coalface. (AP)

EP: FLASH BANG BAND Random Acts Of Kindness (myspace.com/flashbangwallop)
When a band you’ve never encountered before doesn’t sound like anyone else, even the helpful comparisons everyone always puts on their press releases, it’s quite a good ploy to keep you listening. If anyone remembers Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci, that’s probably the closest (vocally at least), but this may just be one of those bands who’ve happened upon a unique sound – quirky accomplished pop without a sneaky ear against the wall of anyone else’s oeuvre. Unique without being willfully difficult, this is most definitely worth your attention. (NC)

SINGLE: GET BACK GUINOZZI Low Flies Tropical (FatCat)
The debut single from FatCat’s latest signing, this has a very definite French slant to it, a Gallic take on turn-of-the-80s revivalism. This is a good thing – although there’s a hint of the current vogue for this era of music, the bubbly interpretation is a welcome antidote to the dour Joy Divisioning of so many. There’s a bouncy Kia Ora taste to the title track which carries on into the b-side, an impossibly bouncy cover of Junior Mervin’s Police And Thieves, whose smiley delivery is gloriously at odds with its street oppression theme. (NC)

DVD: HERE’S JOHNNY (Animal Monday)
Johnny Hicklenton is a renowned graphic artist, known for his work on Judge Dredd and 2000AD. His work is characteristically dark and violent, a thematic styling understandably informed by his battle against Multiple Sclerosis. Set against his own striking designs, beautifully poignant in their upfront depictions of suffering, this award winning documentary sees Johnny ruminate on the progressively degenerative effects of the illness, suicide and the fact that even his cats avoid him. It’s alarmingly frank in places, but his expressions of his plight expressed verbally and through his art are extremely humbling. Get it at heresjohnnyfilm.com. (NC)

EP: KID KORANDI (myspace.com/kidkorandi)
Those of you familiar with the Camp Rock movie from the Disney teen conveyor belt will get this. A band plays, they’re shit, but the girls go nuts. If this was a realistic tale, the girls would be making loser hand shapes across their faces and rolling their eyes. Kid Korandi, however, would have them wetting themselves. Four good looking boys, enough guitar angst and vocal falsetto accenting to render them dreamily sensitive, really good hair and properly catchy rock songs – it’s a perfect recipe for success where the guys will want to be them and the girls will want to shag them. The bastards. (NC)

ALBUM: KILLA KELA Amplified! (100%)
As an album by a world-renowned beatboxer, it’s no surprise that this is an extremely percussive experience, where you won’t know what’s a button press and what’s a spit-spraying cakehole outpouring. There’s a clear emphasis on production, with the sound of the record literally pinning you back in your seat as the electro’s thumping bass messes with your bowels and the rootsy hip hop weaves unlikely melody over the top. A legion of guest producers assures a variation in this relentless assault, which is probably best sampled in smaller measures than the eleven tracks making up its total. (NC)

COMIC: BEN NAYLOR
Geoff: A Half Shark Half Octopus In Asia (from Dave’s Comics and Punker Bunker)
Following his very personal tales of his life with booze, Ben Naylor is back with another story from his life. This time however he’s played by Brighton’s fave octo-shark, the highly likeable Geoff. Except for a few vignettes, this sizable comic is just like reading a regular human’s travelling diary. If you liked William Sutcliffe’s Are You Experienced? this will surely also ring true. It’s not as funny as some of Naylor’s stuff but there’s loads of details and it’s beautifully drawn as ever. (JK)

ALBUM: JEB LOY NICHOLS Strange Faith And Practice (Impossible Ark)
Jazz isn’t an avenue SOURCE wanders down too often, at least not without nervously looking over our shoulder as we venture deeper into its uncertain terrain. But Jeb’s album isn’t really jazz in the Fast Show sense of the word – it isn’t chin stroking, made-up-as-they-go-along nonsense. Sure, it shares a lot of the instrumentation – the trumpets, the shuffly percussion and piano, but this all merely serves as back-up to the man’s husky voice dripping in hot buttered soul. The combination makes for a down-tempo dream of an album and it’s an introduction well worth making. (NC)

SINGLE: RETRO/GRADE Moda (Retro/Grade)
Serge Santiago and Tom Neville first worked together on the famous re-edit of Kano’s It’s A War, arguably the start of the Italo revival. For this first fruit of a new partnership the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree. Simple synths and old school drums mean this sounds totally authentic as 80s Euro dance music. Like those tunes it’s also long and full of mong-friendly melodies. Erol Alkan loves it, by the way. (JK)

SINGLE: SOMETHING BEGINNING WITH L Overcoat (Drift)
Formed from the ashes of the much loved Stuffy & The Fuses, Something Beginning With L are the newest additions to the ever impressive Drift roster. Their debut single Overcoat is a hazy slice of dream pop ambience, coming across like a starry-eyed collaboration between Sparklehorse and The Breeders. Synths are prominent throughout as are the warm, hushed and wonderfully melodic female vocals. All in all, a quiet treasure. (IC)

ALBUM: VARIOUS Tru Thoughts 10th Anniversary (Tru Thoughts)
Wow, ten years at the forefront of jazzed out dance music. There have been some great moments along the way but we’ll get to them next issue. In the meantime let’s concentrate on the celebratory retrospective. Too many tunes to mention, but splitting up into three CDs across downtempo, club and exclusives makes for a great listening experience. The first stars Bonobo, Alice Russell and Nostalgia 77, the second has TM Juke and Quantic while Hint and Domu give never heard tracks for the last. Lovely packaging too. Essential. (JK)

WORDS BY IAN CHAMBERS, NICK COQUET, JAMES KENDALL, ANDY PARKER