Chikinki - Lick Your Ticket

Not content with pillaging the past for inspiration, this record see the band take the ambitious step of plugging into the mains and trying to blast themselves into the future. They bleep, bluster and blister on this release, which successfully manages to combine their love for electro-scuzz, hooky melodies and occasionally delicate guitars. Drum kits are replaced by sensor pads and skittering electronica loops, guitars are run through code-crunching banks of effects, and it seems as if only the vocals tether the band down into conventional rock territory: bounding between a stargazing croon (‘Drink’) or a Mick Jagger yelp (‘To Sacrifice a Child’), depending on whether the band are luxuriating in warm keyboard textures or hurtling along at a rate of electro-rock knots. ‘Assassinator 13’, is a rollicking opener with a rib-vibrating bassline, destined to send a sticky crowd into convulsions. ‘Ether Radio’ sounds like Zoot Woman having fey fisticuffs with The Coopers, but with more testosterone, whereas ‘Hate TV’, is a darkly romantic electro-glam stomp of majestically wasted beauty. But, among the album's twisted sexual traumas, soundclash confessionals and beat-mashing party anthems, ‘Scissors Paper Stone’ stands out as an expansive rock epic inspired by Chikinki's stadium-sized self-belief during their early wilderness years. ‘They steam through their rock-solid wall of future hits with a rare, magnetic natural stage charisma’  NME. ‘Incendiary sonic-assault shows, professorial keyboard genius and a singer who dares to be Mick Jagger’. The Face. ‘Smells like the future of rock ‘n’ roll’ The Fly

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