Peepholes/Apatt
Split

5
...according to our Business Lady on 16 September 2010.

Been waiting for this one to drop for a while. Upset The Rhythm have a tendency to release music by all my favourite U.K bands with A.P.A.T.T being no exception, yet I'm relatively underexposed to Peepholes so I get the added bonus of being introduced to a new band too. Cheers lads. The A-side is the Peeps side and, from what I've heard so far, I'm digging it. Reminds me a little of A Middle Sex but without the sombre edge they possess and more of a ethereal vibe in it's place. Lively drums collide with kaleidoscopic synth and vocal ambiance to create vast, mind bending psyche jams with a heavy dose of quirk added to increase the fun-times. They sound like they have as much fun making this music as I'm having listening to it. Pass the lifepipe bro'. Now on to the A.p.a.t.t side...and fuck me this is a good side of wax! Anyone who has heard A.p.a.t.t will know they are incredibly talented musicians who specialise in undefinable, genre-hopping madness that seems to have stemmed from an obsession with Beefheart, jazz, Mr. Bungle, extreme forms of metal, Tom Waits, Prince, Punk Rock and all forms of party music. They write crazy shit, they write fun stuff, the write beautiful ballads and that's just for starters. It'd be possible to write a thesis with the amount of goodness going on here but i'll try and keep it simple...there's a fantastic tin-pot jazz effort, a mad country song, some freeform electro-rock stuff, an amazing 70's style funk-off and, probably their wildest R&B hit 'Everybody's Talkin' which is worth the price tag alone. These guys and girls are an incredibly talented lot and their props are well overdue. Sorry Peepholes, you rule too. x

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What their label says...

* This split 12” LP features an album by Peepholes and Apatt, they share a circle of vinyl courtesy of Upset The Rhythm’s split series.
* Peepholes are Katia Barrett and Nick Carlisle who take turns singing, drumming and synth-prodding whilst smiling a lot and running back and forth on stage. Their songs, often cloaked in a cloud of echoing atmospherics, throb with raucous beats and jab you in the eye when you're not looking. It's party music for the lost at sea - sometimes primitive, sometimes soaring, never boring. Apatt are collective formed in Liverpool in 1998 and are pretty much impossible to classify! United by their branded nurses' outfits, but performing with everything from 2 to 7 members and going through a constant evolution of hardware and software changes, the group fuses mathy, synth-led moments with almost klezmery freak-outs rendered in accordion, strings, brass and piano. Think the missing link between The Locust, Danielson Famile and A Hawk and A Hacksaw and you may be getting close!

* The Peepholes side of the release features 6 new tracks leading on from their recent EP Lair on Hungry For Power. ‘Airforce Trainer’ is all swirling keyboard chords, reverberating vocals and tribal drum batterings. Kat’s catchy vocal lines are echoed by Nick on the pulsating ‘Alpine Song’ which has a wonderful wobbly descending synth melody
giving way to a lonesome coda full of icy feelings of displacement. Perhaps the most triumphant moment of the album sees Peepholes wield a mighty 7 minute track called Carnivore which in it’s breadth pushes Ariel Pink through the some Sparks albums, whilst bubbling synth noise and exploding cymbals fry the song within an inch of it’s life. The other two stand out tracks ‘Sleep In The Shower’ and ‘Pulling Cars’ both tap into a similar energy of No Age at their most honest
and anthemic, drawing from electronics to the fore alongside Kat’s perfect hollers.

* Apatt manage to defy time somehow and cram 8 songs onto the other side. With ‘The Village Idiot’ Apatt achieve a highpoint in their career so far, it’s a perfectly scored absurdist piece for clarinet, piano, guitar and drums, bursting with energy and enough invention to make Patton and Zappa double take. ‘The Village Idiot’ is a tour de force, Apatt firing on all weird cylinders and the rest of the album lives up to its illustrious opener, taking in schmaltz pastiche, devo punk, a diatribe against Tamla Motown and classy rock out in aid of the ‘Maggot Fairy’. It’s the end or the distant future of music and one day the whole world will appreciate the epic labrynthine appeal of Apatt’s approach to music, I sincerely hope to live for the day.

* This spilt 12” is part of a series of double headline discs Upset The Rhythm continue to release in support of the UK’s
current and vibrant new underground music scene. Past titles have included The Sticks, Chops, Hands On Heads,
Helhesten, Leopard Leg, and Please.

TRACKLIST:

A. PEEPHOLES 1. Airforce Trainer 2. Batwingy 3. Alpine Song 4. Sleep In The Showe 5. Pulling Ca 6. Carnivore

B. APATT 1. Village Idiot 2. Candlelight 3. 10 Downing Street 4. Taxi Driver 5. I Fucking Hate Tamla Motown 6. Everybody’s Talking 7. De Do Dah 8. Maggot Fairy