"THE THRILL KISSER" Tin Star V2: VVR 100 1942. Release: 26 Oct 98 ****

A slightly strange but always palatable mixture of contemporary drum`n`bass stylisations with more conventional guitar based rock music, this album never fails to entertain, and occasionally even astound! I have been in this business for more years than I care to remember - it is certainly a weird feeling reviewing an album by a band young enough (just) to be my own children and certainly young enough to be my girlfriend`s kids but I can truthfully say: "The Boys Done Good!"

The band cunningly vary the pace between elegantly brutal songs which thrash away merrily and more sombre ballads. There was once a fanzine called "The Great Bedsit in the Sky" which covered the sort of sombre musings which folks of the student persuasion like to listen to in their darkened rooms whilst undergoing adolescant angst. The bedsit music of my youth, and that of ten years ago has not lasted well. This soundtrack to the angst of this generation of students looks likely to have a far greater degree of staying power. Atilla the Hen

'Sometimes I wake up in the morning my feet my soul my arms my legs my self my eggs are all fried,' this rhythmically-rolling album merrily commences - and then rocks at varying tempos through the usual pop-rock themes of 'I did this, I did that and I still have time', etc. The backing - strings in places, bubbly spounds in others, underpins the percussion well, and the overall effect is reminiscent of Bowie's Earthlings in places, which is OK by me.. And I like the mix, too, so there! - Slutto

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BACKGROUND

Formed eighteen months ago, and signed to V2 on their first demo, Tin Star have spent the intervening months holed up in Tim Gordine’s house, writing, recording, dismembering and reassembling the debut album 'Thrill Kisser'.

‘Thrill Kisser’ is a product of this "intense process" and the immediacy of being able to record whenever a groove demanded, and facilitated the band's main objective: to get the sounds in their heads recorded. David Tomlinson and Tim Bricheno write the songs, and, in the words of the Excess Press press release, "are then fucked up by Tim Gordine". I thought that's what bass players were for! Anyway, he doesn't seem to have done them too much harm - they're no more banal than most of Deep Purple's lyrics, for instance.

Excess inform us in a moment of wonderful hyperbole that "live, they play instruments of glass, sampling stripped to a minimum, tenderly drawing the audience into a their web on gold-spun threads, and the audience respond to the groove, to the mood." Er, yes.

"The result is a mixture of subjective moods and emotions, filtered with an objective clarity, set to seductive beats and hypnotic guitars." Well, I can go along with that, anyhow.

Over the last 3 months the band have just played eight 'hugely successful' dates at London's Club Mink and are currently doing a nationwide tour with Baby Bird. Tin Star have already released a single, ‘Viva’, which is lifted from the "Thrill Kisser" album. - Slutto.

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