Avant Garde Blood Sports

Good mate Paul - yes, he who co-founded this "illustrious" blog - turned me onto this little release from Sheffield trio Blood Sport. Their six-track LP Life In Units is equal parts precise math instrumentation, weird errant pop, scrawled intricacies, sci-fi malapropisms and spastic rhythms - suitably skewed stuff. Even the cover art is an amalgam of the artwork of David Hockney and Francis Bacon - when heady worlds from either end of the spectrum collide, it bears strange fruit. Yet Life In Units is incredibly beguiling, and when a track like '20202016 VIP' hits its stride, you will find yourself rocking back and forth, hunched in a standing foetal position, ready to be taken up by a higher being. It's only music, sure, but when Blood Sport understand the seduction of the sonic slipstream, they wield almighty power.

You can buy Life In Units on 12" vinyl here. Blood Sport are playing at Birthdays in London on February 8 with Tera Melos - and are also supporting Mike Watt in their hometown in April. Then the penny drops. Kindred spirits there. You should get along if you are in the area - or even if you aren't - TM are sweet dudes, and I think Blood Sport will defy their name and have a pint with you rather than make you bite the kerb. But that's just hearsay on my part - they could still stomp the shit out of you. Only one way to find out...