The Tupolev Ghost
The Alpha EP

Just three songs short and easily consumable, the first in a planned series of three EPs from noisy Cambridge quartet The Tupolev Ghost rattles around these speakers with ease, switching from grungy hard rock to the slightly more structured stop-start of something a little more complex, all wrapped up in an exceptionally loud lo-fi bundle so fleeting and tantalising it might almost be considered a tease.

Step right up for a dustbin-lid drum sound that almost drowns out the vocals, throatily enraged in places yet wiry, Q And Not U-style, in others, the music itself a tip of the hat to Fugazi with distorted guitars lightweight and streamlined but doubtless still capable of laceration. The shack-recorded sound is so far from the chunky chug of mainstream production that it’s almost emaciated in comparison, and whilst this lo-fi way should rarely be considered a bad thing, the niggling impression left by The Alpha EP’s production values is that it could do with a little more punch, the tracks not always hurtling through the air towards your jugular like the moor-stalking behemoths they should be.

Not that the EP can’t survive without this suggested tweak, and it rightly does, hammering home over 12-ish minutes its discordant Dischord point – ‘First Prize’ a stalking heavy-hitter with periods of vocal insecurity, the harshly-panning snare effect on the sloping, fuzzy ‘Autodidact’ proving itself a work of slight genius before the release rounds off with a battle of sharply-clean lead guitar lines. Hit repeat.