ChikinkiExperiment With Mother

The thing with Bristol, yeah, is that it’s never going to be known for anything other than trip-hop. No matter how hard the resurgent alt.rock and hardcore scene tries, they’re always going to be playing second fiddle to those blokes with made-up names who spend all their time in dark and gloomy studios playing with Tracey Thorn. If that’s the case, then how were you planning to explain the current phenomena known as Chikinki?

Showing an eclecticism that encompasses the droning dirge-pop of ‘Delivery 25’ and the mutoid drum’n’bass barrage of ‘Like It Or Leave It’, it appears that Chikinki are setting themselves up to be Add N To (X)’s precocious younger brothers, until they throw you off kilter with the mournful Elliott Smith aping ‘Elvis Impersonator’, while much of the proceedings are imbibed with the spirit of the Make-Up, proving that sometimes it really isn’t possible to approach this sort of thing with any prejudices about how a band is going to sound.

In fact, you could almost go as far as to say that ‘Experiment With Mother’ should be considered the blueprint for bands looking to combine their guitar-based vision with a wider-ranging diversity, without reducing your music to a awkward combination of guitar-wank and clumsy beats as is so often the case.

Even given the almost pornographic artwork, you get the feeling that Rupert, Boris, Trevor et al have been experimenting with more than just their mother, and given that the resultant concoction offers up new surprises at every turn, this sort of thing should be encouraged if Bristol is ever going to throw off its stereotypical musical heritage.