Reviews

We have seen Hand Me My Jetpack play live countless times ever since they first caught our attention around six months ago. Their on-stage energy translates their punchy, rhythmic-focused, catchy songs into a fighting action hero. It was always going to be a difficult task to melt down the past half a year of their music into something people can take home with them but their self-funded CD-R does a damn fine job in bottling their energy into eight airtight tracks that literally fight their way out of the stereo speakers.

Hand Me My Jetpack consist of three intersecting forces, created from the ashes of harmonic cloud nine floaters, I Love Space, as well as harder rocking New Zealand bands - Degrees K and Letterbox Lambs. The collision of these varied sounds was always going to be the key strength of Hand Me My Jetpack. The vocal work is split between Joel Werner and Dean Cameron who throughout the record switch their roles as harmoniser and lead with fantastic unison. When performing live the microphones are arranged in a face-off style which creates a fantastic image accompaniment to their dualing vocal work. On record the battle is still evident and acts as the key focus of every song. Vocal arrangements rarely follow a structured pattern and the application of random effects on top of this throw the listener off course even more.

There isn't a dull moment on this release. No time to catch your breathe, adjust your helmets and/or calculate how this band is able to cram so much sound into a four minute episode. I'm not going to get into how tragic it is that this album doesn't have a record label behind it - we all know the state of play.

Hopefully a record label will 'discover' these guys soon and get this mini-album out there. In the meantime - send us an email if you want a copy.

Words by Jonny.