polaroids of androids

This six-track EP opens with a song called Eustace, which sputters into life with, what sounds like, an electronic squeak of pain. This makes way for a drum build-up and a grinding guitar riff, before settling on a harmonised, flower-cloud floating vocal track laid over a stripped-back minimal landscape. The vocals then abruptly build with theatrical grandeur, before dying right back down. It took Le Kingste all of two minutes to completely destroy any possible predefined judgments that I may have had.

The only consistent theme throughout this EP is the almost-midi sounding keys that consistently pop up, and the fairly enchanting emotive vocals. The supernatural/space-age aspect of the music immediately draws comparisons to bands like Muse, who playfully bask in the world of ridicolously over-the-top futuristic drama. Le Kingste don't quite exist in the same stadium-sized stratosphere and are a lot more interested in focusing their music around the switching of pace and tone, seemingly far more comfortable performing in dimly lit lounge rooms at house parties than in football arenas.

At the epicentre of this EP is the current single and moderately 'funked-up' number, Two Pills. It fuses together haunting elements over a bass-heavy, up-tempo composition to create a song that is the band's most pop-focused tune - yet also their lightest on substance. Other tracks, such as the dull Dark Night and the closer, Paradise, which switches from bedroom demo to bad barbershop quartet rendition with a quick decreasing gradient of cassette hiss, add little to the overall quality of the EP and come over as nothing more than last minute additions to fatten up the release.

The quality of the band - which is essentially an expanded one-man operation - is best on show in the opening two tracks and even more so on the EP's climatic point, the pain-soaked Chorus In Nine. These three songs are a lot more active, and although much less pop oriented, gather together a wonderful mix of strange, conflicting elements that perfectly compliment the strong vocal style. They also cleverly blur the line between minimal homemade creations and much larger epics. It's this contrasting of styles where Le Kingste really start to come into their own. Hopefully this is the side of their sound which the group expand upon when they move towards a full length release.