This single is one of Come Play With Me’s split releases; this is the label’s first split release with another label – Call & Response of Japan.

Treeboy & Arc’s ‘Plastic Front’ is a maelstrom of post-punk noise but it’s somehow controlled, it’s structured. And somewhere in there is a tune, listen way too many times and you find yourself humming along while at the same time moving compulsively in a jerky way. It has a dark beauty, albeit one that I find it somehow difficult to say why. It’s partially the darkness, partially something I just can’t put my finger on. But I like that, I like music I can’t exactly explain why I like it so much, I keep listening to try and work out why it’s so good.

The kicker, the thing that makes what Treeboy & Arc so good is that they use synths in a way that adds that tune, they add a pulse. It’s strange, it’s something great and wonderful.

It has echoes of Joy Division, Siouxsie and The Banshees, The Gang of Four (it’s weirdly funky people), yet it’s new and of today, of the now. And it’s incredibly well played and put together. The vocals and the words – and the words are important, they tell a dark story – shine through the noise.

‘Plastic Front’ came about after James from the band made a trip to Poland. He explains “I visited Gdańsk for a short but sweet 26 hour and 10 minute trip. I was on my way back to the airport and I saw someone crash going about 60mph on the hard shoulder of the motorway. My immediate thought was that they must be dead, but after 7-8 Polish men and myself running over to check, we found the man to be alive and ok, just in a lot of disbelief and confusion. People pushed the car off the road as I helped clear up broken bits of plastic and glass, then everyone just headed off as if nothing had happened.”

Speaking about where the lyrical inspiration came from, James says “When I was on the plane home I was more aware than usual of all of the images and constant warnings about what to do in the instance of the plane crashing. Whilst reading through it all I wrote the lyrics to Plastic Front as it all just felt like a pretty weird and odd experience.”

The thing about ‘Plastic Front’ is that it sounds important, it sounds significant, it’s not at all throwaway. It’s wildly beautiful.

‘Plastic Front’ is paired with Jebiotto’s ‘Get Down’. Jebiotto hail from Tokyo and I’m somehow tempted to say only in Japan could they do this, it’s punk played mainly on synths. It’s wild, it has an insanely catchy thing going on, something that is actually quite pop-y in a weirdly 80s’ way. It reminds me in a strange – perhaps too strange – way of ‘99 Red Balloons’ and ‘Kids From America’.

I played this to a friend and they said it sounded like a bunch of pre-teens who have cheap toy keyboards hyped up on sugar just going mad trying to cover some sort of 80s’ pop hit. I kind of know what they mean.

This single was released on 8th February 8th by Come Play With Me. It is available on 7” vinyl. The single can be ordered from the Come Play With Me website http://www.cpwm.co (or directly from th CPWM Bandcamp page https://cpwm.bandcamp.com/album/cpwm013). Limited signed copies of the single are available.

The info

COME PLAY WITH ME is a not-for-profit label based out of Leeds which looks to showcase the amazing talent coming from the region. It is best known for its series of split 7” releases that have included (Katie) Harkin, Cinerama (The Wedding Present), Team Picture, Magick Mountain, The Golden Age Of TV & Dead Naked Hippies. This represents the label’s first split release with another label – Call & Response of Japan.

Having received many plaudits from the likes of DIY, So Young, Clash, BBC Introducing, RADIO X and more, 2019 is set to be a big year for Treeboy & Arc. The band is made up of James Kay (vocals + bass), Ben Morgan (guitar + vocals), George Townend (guitar), Sam Robinson (guitar/synth) and Isaac Turner (drums) and are at their best when seen live; a vital, energetic mass of bodies somehow being held together on stage.

Jebiotto are a 3-piece synth punk band from Tokyo, Japan featuring Madca on synth and vocals, Moririn on drums and electro-pads and Tutti on guitar, threaded through a bass amp. Jebiotto are a unique collision of pop and raw, chaotic energy emerging from the dank basements of the Tokyo underground music scene. Their music is built around a core of bold, anthemic, new wave synthpop, twisted and deformed by influences including Dan Deacon, Blonde Redhead and Bikini Kill. The result is a set of tunes with the electricity and sharp edges of art-punk wrapped around the beating heart of fist-pumping stadium rock.

So when Amaku Miru got in touch the first thing I asked myself was ‘why haven’t I heard of this band before?’ and ‘where have they been all my life?’ so taken by these two songs as I was. This is, of course, a case of failing to read the email they sent properly before checking out the link to their music (What, again, you really must remember to do that – Ed). For Amaku Miru are a ‘relatively new band’, although this could mean anything from a month ago to say six months ago.

‘Read All About It’ starts with of all things a kind of chiming bell sound over which a bassline comes in. This bassline is kinda stalky and slow. And then there is gentle guitar – and this is even before the vocals.. But it was the vocals that really and truly had me hooked, for these are female vocals that have vibes of all sorts of strange things – folk, plainsong, weird late 70s/early 80s DIY bands (of which I have way too much of in my music collection).

The thing about this song is that slightly sinister stalky bassline fits the what the song is about – it’s a sarcastic tune about opinion columns and how out of touch they can be with the real world.

Anyway back to the music – gradually it builds, it builds with simmering guitar, then a guitar that is almost blusey in a way, then guitar that is roaring in a sort of restrained way, until it isn’t restrained it’s a full blown almost Samothrace-y guitar thing. This sounds as though it might be jarring, but it isn’t because that voice rings out in the most lovely way over it.

And yes, the more you listen, the more you hear, that the chiming sound sits there under everything else, that there is rather clever doubling of vocal lines in places. That there is this really sparse use of some sort of rhythm track – it’s just this sort of cymbal sound that comes and goes. That I could swear there’s some sort of synth somewhere there. And all of this is mesmerising, it’s hypnotic, it’s compelling.

This would be enough, it’s almost too too much really, but there’s a second track to this single, the rather witty and clever ‘An Introvert’s Guide to Partying’, a party tune about not liking parties. That rather cleverly – although I may be guilty of reading far too much into something musically – uses a bass line that sounds like the one’s you hear in the room or flat next door to a party. It’s kind of a jaunty thing that still has that slightly churchy and folky thing going on in the vocals; albeit in a rather spacey sounding way. And it has the loveliest guitar.

I love and adore music like this. It’s clever, it’s witty, it’s oh-so well put together, it has a charm. And while it’s obviously constructed – look two people couldn’t do this in real time – it has a looseness that is wonderful, it is loose but tight or even tight but loose. It reminds me of music I loved in my youth way back when. It’s the sound of two people treading their own path. And it doesn’t fit into a genre or even a niche that you can put a name to. And while the band may say that they have elements of indie in there, I don’t get that at all, I get the rock thing and the electro thing, but indie nope. And it has elements of so many other things that the description the band give us could be vast. But that is part of the attraction for me, I love music that I can’t describe in any sort of adequate way in a short pithy sentence; the only way you’re going to get a true picture of what it sounds like is to actually listen to it, which I strongly suggest you do.

You can downland the music from iTunes or Bandcamp: https://amakumiru.bandcamp.com/album/read-all-about-it-an-introverts-guide-to-partying

Or stream from Spotify

The info

The band say ‘Amaku Miru is a two piece electro/rock/indie band from Leeds, initially formed out of the frustration of trying to keep a traditional four piece band together. Our sound is a mix of live
instruments and vocals and pre-recorded electronic and acoustic sounds.

Our set-up means we approach creating music from an almost backwards place for a rock band – recording and producing our tracks first, and forming our live performance around what we have made after. This also means we are able to add extra layers and collect and mix field recordings into our live sound. Our songs are about the things we know, for example not liking parties and getting angry on the internet. You can listen to and download our music on a wide range of streaming platforms such as Spotify and iTunes’