Chat and Business is the debut album from British post punk / art rock band Ikara Colt. It was released on Fantastic Plastic Records on March 4th 2002 (released in Europe and the USA on Epitaph Records, and in Japan by Maximum 10 Records). The record was disqualified from the UK album charts as accompanying stickers, which the purchaser was to match with the captions below spaces on the cover of the album, were deemed to be a free gift.
the album was released in the following formats
UK Digipack CD with stickers
UK 12" Vinyl LP
UK Re-Issue CD in Jewelcase
UK Reissue Box-Set (Jewel case edition + basic instructions EP)
US Digipack CD with Stickers
US 12" Vinyl LP
EU Double Digipack CD with stickers (CD2 features 4 bonus tracks from basic instructions ep)
JAPAN Jewelcase CD with lyric booklet and bonus tracks (Memory & Your Vain Attempts)
1. One Note
2. Rudd
3. Bishop's Son
4. City of Glass
5. Pop Group
6. Belgravia
7. Sink Venice
8. After This
9. At the Lodge
10. Here We Go Again
11. May B 1 Day
12. Video Clip Show/Escalate
13. Memory (Japanese bonus)
14. Your Vain Attempts (Japanese bonus)
15. Bring It To Me (EU bonus)
16. May B 1 Day #2 (EU bonus)
17. Don't They Know (EU bonus)
18. Panic (EU bonus)
30 comments:
alternative press
The Strokes comparisons were inevitable: sharply dressed retro art-school punks just a little too detached to emote - even NME couldn't miss that one. But it's NYC-versus-Britain, who-(re)invented-punk debate all over again, because the what eternally avant Velvet Underground are to the Strokes, the eternally recording Fall are to London's Ikara Colt.
At least one aspect of the Fall, anyway: While singer Paul Resende and guitarist Claire Ingram create a maelstrom of monotonous guitar drone and exaggerated Cockney ranting, the rhythm section is pure '70s punk adrenaline. Tunes like the well-titled opener, "One Note," and the hateful "Pop Group" speed by without regarding for pace or dynamics - the latter has Resende letting down his cool and actually straining to hit a few notes. The closest Ikara Colt get to being a pop group, by the way, is the catchy, background-vocal-sweetened "Sink Venice," but it's still too speedy, too sloopy and too snide to make much of a dent in American radio.
If there's a fault with Ikara Colt, it's that they can't rock steadily for more than a few measures without getting self-conscious about it - some arty, angular bridge will mess up the primitivism (as in the garagey "Rudd"), or guitarist Ingram will muddy it up with a bit of abstract guitar dissonance ("Belgravia"). Of course, that's the exact thing that'll endear them to listeners who something a tiny bit less formulaic and more inaccessible than the current crop of retro hipsters. (John Pecorelli)
aversion.com
Punk thrives in a vacuum. The earliest acts had nothing but a love for great rock’n’roll, a few chords and the desire to wreak musical havoc. To this day few bands can compare to the class of ’77. Some of the best post-hardcore sprung up from Midwestern towns that were previously unknown for having top-shelf punk scenes. Despite some world-class bands from California and New York City, both regions have produced enough pure, unadulterated crap to cover Rhode Island with a two-inch steaming glaze.
It shouldn’t be too much of a surprise, then, that there’s some pretty classy punk outfits turning up in London clubs. No, punk hasn’t been extinct in the Empire, nor will it ever probably ever really be, but in a year the British punk world doesn’t release as many albums as Southern California pours out in a matter of weeks. Things couldn’t be better for punk fans with a fetish for a transatlantic accent.
Ikara Colt’s Chat and Business proves that punk works best when it works alone. While there’s no doubt that the four Brits in the band have nothing but the spite for the mainstream music world that fueled everyone from The Sex Pistols to Rancid, there’s no need for the band to jump anyone else’s train on this record, or buy into a thriving scene. It’s got its own sound, and, frankly, it’s ready to rain holy terror down on the clouds of 100th-generation Bad Relgion wannabes, UK82 thugs, anachronistic hardcore acts and every other flavor of band that’s tried to become punk simply by imitating its ancestors. The past is dead, Chat and Business screams, so let it rot. Punk’s still living – and not just on some sort of traditionalist, preservationist ventilator, either – and ready to rock you.
No offense to American punks (a few of whom really do rock the roof off), but Ikara Colt’s got fangs, venom and a striking speed that make this record much more deadly than 95 percent of Yankee three-chord rock. While the act blasts with the same scratchy migraine guitars as bands like The Hives, it’s a long, long way from the garage. Between the nagging guitar work that calls to mind The Clash and Fugazi, without sounding much like either ("Bishop’s Son" and "Here We Go Again") and howled male/female vocals that sounds exactly like that of X’s John Doe and Exene Cervenka – had they recorded while being tortuously stretched on the rack – with desperate passion ("May B 1 Day"), it’s hard not to give Ikara Colt your attention. Then again, Chat and Business is anything but a relaxed record. The best punk albums – The Clash, Minor Threat’s Discography, The Birthday Party’s Prayers on Fire – aren’t exactly user friendly. They take a bit of warming up to for listeners to really get into them. While Ikara Colt is a few grades shy of deserving comparisons to such acts, this album is certainly the first step down a road that will land the band top-rate status.
billboard.com
Dumping its paintbrushes and sculpting clay in favor of guitars, the U.K. art school quartet Ikara Colt endorses minimalism on its debut album. With traces of legends like the Fall, Wire, and early Sonic Youth, the group conjures up notions of avant punk's past, while managing to carve out an identity of its own through the exhilarating racket found on "Chat and Business."
The forceful rhythm beneath the disc opening chaos of "One Note" comes courtesy of bassist Jon Ball and drummer Dominic Young; and it's really all it takes to get these dozen songs in gear. Paul Resende's distorted vocals mesh elements of Johnny Rotten's snarl with Mark E. Smith's atonal croak not only here but throughout the album. Claire Ingram's jagged guitar lines tingle spines on the self-descriptive number, while further Fall tinges resonate on "Belgravia," when Ingram adds her vocals to Resende's. Welcome to Ikara's wonderful and frightening world.
"Sink Venice" speeds along like the thoroughbred horse that begat the outfit's unique moniker, resulting in a powerful and exciting three minutes that sketches Sonic Youth's "Daydream Nation." Elsewhere, angular riffs drive "Here We Go Again" and "After This," as Resende's indecipherable microphone work supports the theory that it isn't what you sing, it's how you sing it.
180 degrees away from the subdued sounds of U.K. chart dominators like Travis and Coldplay, Ikara Colt will give Anglophiles alike a shot in the arm with "Chart and Business." It's not easily digestible ear candy and does take a number of spins to reveal its charms. But by pulling from alt rock's elite past to concoct its own primitive magic, Ikara Colt has come up with a rock solid first album. (John D. Luerssen)
bizzare
Ikara Colt achieve what the unstoppable slew of wannabe sewage consistently fails to achieve by sounding like they've actually heard some punk records. This business comes straight out with a rampaging attitude on "One Note", boots laced up to its knees, kicking and spitting with raw agression. As CHAT warms up it becomes more jagged, its rough and raw guitars providing
the edge and spike required, sounding like the speed-punk of classic USoutfits but always pissing on the present competition.
boston globe
Like many of the best British rock imports, Ikara Colt formed when the members met at art school. Their debut album, ''Chat and Business,'' is reason to be thankful that they put down their paintbrushes and picked up guitars. The album is a minimalist wash of guitars, layers of loose-limbed hooks, and thickly reverbed bass lines, over which the vocals of John Ball and Claire Ingram weave in and out with an almost childlike bluntness. The sound is reminiscent of early Sonic Youth, and like their American counterparts, the band has an aggressive earnestness and a sophisticated control of the form that makes even the lo-fi sound and sometimes trancelike repetition of lyrics build powerfully. The album opens with ''One Note,'' which has a driving rhythm and spiky vocals that channel the bile of original Brit punks like Johnny Rotten. Throughout the rest of the album, the vocals sound diffused, as if sung through a kid's telephone made from two soup cans and a length of string. These vocals are joined by jangly guitar that peekaboos from an onslaught of frantically rolled drums on ''Bishop's Son.'' The songs ''Belgravia'' and ''Sink Venice,'' both successful singles in Britain, are catchy art-pop tracks that exemplify the band's sound. Male and female vocals play off each other, joining before the male voice ricochets off for a solo verse, the vocals layered between chiming guitar hooks and loping bass. Ikara Colt may have maintained an art-school sensibility, but these guys have the tough sneer of rock 'n' rollers. (Sara Tomlinson)
boston phoenix
English punk bands have always taken a slightly different approach to rebel rock from that of their stateside counterparts. Reaching all the way back to the first British punk explosion of the late ’70s, when the Clash, Gang of Four, and Wire merged aggressive music with the considered feel of high art and the urgency of leftist politics, England has had a tradition of what might be called progressive or art-school punk — a tradition that Ikara Colt enthusiastically take up on their debut album. The co-ed London foursome work with familiar ingredients here: furious, treble-heavy guitars, impatient drums, sassy boy-girl vocals, a minimal bass throb. At times they suggest what the short-lived British riot grrrl group Huggy Bear might have become if they’d endured a little longer. Yet Ikara Colt have the restless and infectious energy of a rebel-rock outfit who just discovered punk yesterday. "Sink Venice" and "Pop Group" spew amplifier fuzz and youthful dissatisfaction so convincingly that they sound like a revelation instead of just more pop-punk boilerplate in an era that’s been crowded with it. (Mikael Woods Less)
careless talk costs lives
On their first two singles, London quartet Ikara Colt were an amalgam of Cockney art school swagger and fucked-off cool. "Chat... " proves they have the stamina to go the distance. There may be vague echoes of Pixies and hints of ace Doncaster greased up mentalists Groop Dogdrill, but Ikara Colt have their own, new spikey shape. No track outstays its welcome. "One Note" has a self explanatory title, while the dual schizoid attack of "After This" and "Here We Go Again" are packed full of razor-sharp riffs and what could well be vicious slogans if only you could understand them.
Join the queue.
cd music shop
If you are one who is particulery sick of the onslaught of new retro revivalist rock bands that have sprung up in the wake of The Strokes and their nyc progeny, then you might as well stop reading this review right here. Ikara Colt are an LA based british band that are seemingly riding the coat-tails of the minimalist garage rehash of the last year and a half. Yet while thier contemporaries, (and let's face it, superiors)such as the strokes and interpol, manage to do quite well at injecting thier own character and vitaliy into the late 70's rock and post-punk aesthetic Ikara Colt seem quite one dimensional. Thier bland sounding, almost indistinguishable from one another songs, seriously lack a sense of urgency and wit that would add some much needed color.
Yet this not a band without redeming qualities. Ikara Colt has found themselves a niche with pounding out punchy, quite and efficient rockers that are short on originality, but huge on attitude and careless grit. Chat & Business takes plenty of cues from jagged edges of Joy Division to the combustablity of early 90's sonic youth in thier basic guitar, drum, vox mix that occasionly adds some synth for minimal flourishins. Oddly the bands few numbers that hint at some sort of dynamic proggesion are left until the tail end of the disc where the seem to arrive too late to infuse any power into the record
Most likely this album will only have a lasting appeal for fans of rough around the edges brit pop and straight ahead rockers. Anyone looking for a real sense of substance beyond the visceral attack of Ikara Colt will probably be left unsatisfied.
Bottom line, this may be a somewhat promising debut for a tight, stripped down rock band, you have to ask yourself if theres really a need for another one of those.
city pages
It's easy to feel hesitant about embracing the British music press's latest bedfellow. And a certain declaration by NME that London punks Ikara Colt are "brilliant" is cause for a step back. Then again, the quartet--who convened as art students in 1999--almost manages to live up to that claim.
The band works in every hallmark of Brit art-punk tradition on their debut full-length, the thoroughly Anglo Chat and Business. The album's minimalist packaging, complete with stick-on black and white photos, recalls Factory Records. And its 12 hit-em-up tracks are pure jump-cut punk: Keyboardist Paul Resende's vocals, spat like a young Mark E. Smith, have a flatness that's beyond deadpan. Meanwhile, Dominic Young's drumming is pinpoint angular, and Claire Ingram's guitar is almost violently precise, careful not to bleed distortion. "One Note" thunders forward, a bassline pulsating with hypertension at its heart. Likewise, a speedy three-chord lead guitar and steadfast drum propel "Bishop's Son." The stickwork slows to a gelatin quiver on "City of Glass," as Resende's punk-as-shaman mantra, "A new dawn is coming," forges along toward revelation. "Pop Group" and Ingram's "Belgravia" skip along to the same verse-chorus-chorus-verse beat.
As on the Fall's best tracks, Ikara Colt's lyrics, though tersely provocative, sometimes take a back seat to the group's charismatic shout-speak delivery. But Smith does well with the formula, and Ikara Colt sound extremely proficient. Time will certainly tell whether their hands-around-your throat approach will sustain another gasp. As for the legacy of British punk (and press), Chat and Business is probably business as usual. (Kate Silver)
classic rock
While so much new music is of the wheedling Starsailor variety, its reassuring to hear a debut album with the vehemence of Ikara Colts. Takingthe full range of archetypal art-noise influences from Fugazi to Wire, they've fashioned a strong set with a 21st century identity.
"Bishop's Son" has the intensity of 'Goo'-era Sonic Youth, but when Claire Ingram hits those minimal guitar notes and adds vocal backing to "Belgravia" and "Here We Go Again" it could be classic, Brix Smith-era Fall. the band also integrate cheapo, Casino-style electronica into "At The Lodge" and "May B 1 Day" but the effect is thankfully more Neul than Bis. And the glorious "Sink Venice" is an iconoclassic rant against just about everything.
IKARA COLT are up there with At The Drive In and Trail Of Dead in terms of cutting-edge sound and fury, and in this country they're virtually peerless.
columbus alive
Chat and Business is the most recent Veni, Vedi, Vicious-like success story. Originally released on a tiny UK imprint in March, Epitaph plucked the disc up in the hopes of repeating a Hives-like commotion. Being good art students (that’s where the band met up and formed in 1999), Ikara Colt probably doesn’t much care about commerce, and it shows in the uncompromising nature of the band’s debut as well as the apparent artifice within.
Guitarist Claire Ingram’s voice battles that of keyboardist Paul Resende in a yin-and-yang clash that’s both chaotic (think Atari Teenage Riot) and drenched in atonality (think youthful Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon). Ikara Colt is a lot closer to the latter group than the former, mainly because even the electronic pulsing and static of “May B 1 Day” is a lot closer to Wire’s industrial-tinged art-punk than anything soiled by advancing modernity.
This old-school cool is what the Brits rely on throughout this record. Eerie melodies layered beneath in-your-face antagonism are held together with slippery rhythm work and a garage-rock grounding that allows for all dozen cuts to be catchy, yet at the same time desultorily complex. Ikara Colt is punker and smarter than you. Deal with it. (Brian O’Neill)
cosmic debris
From the streets once walked by Jack The Ripper, this Whitechappel-area group of Brits do some slashing of their own, the victims apparently being some of Claire Ingram's speaker cones. We're talking about some nasty guitar tones that snarl and sting, but you should know up front that we're not talking about conventional "one-to-three-four" punk the likes of which you find on every other CD in the bin. There's creativity here, even streams of musical consciousness that can make a song stay in the neighborhood of one chord most of the way through but have enough single note variations and sheer energy to make you feel like you've just heard something complex and amazing. If it grabs you by the imagination, then it is amazing, and a closer examination of Ikara Colt's sound reveals surprising circuitry behind that wall of guitar, such as low register synths provided by vocalist Paul Resende, electronic drums shadowing Dominic Young's actual playing, the powerful and even aggressive bass work of Jon Ball, and Resende's perfectly imperfect vocals. He's not one of those annoying out-of-tune singers. More of an impassioned shouter. Nothing else would work within Ikara Colt's noise and adrenaline framework. Too many decent bands are putting out decent albums worthy of fairly good reviews, and too few are putting out albums like Chat and Business, which won't be everybody's cup of tea, but will knock a lot of people for a loop and have them checking the CD stores for the next release on a regular basis. (DJ Johnson)
crud
Here's the deal. As far as we see it you have just a couple of options. Now, either we put you in concrete boots, kick you into Camden Lock and leave you to think for a while, or we roughly gaffer your speakers to your face, let you get uncomfortable and then hand you over to 'Chat and Business' for treatment. One will be less painful, in the long run anyway, believe us. Because you really need to learn, you do, and if anything's going to get through it has to be this. Stroppy East London art student types Ikara Colt have, y'see, delivered a debut that spits out society's gristle and bursts the seams of independence. With not a prisoner in sight, natch.
See, music has been tad complacent of late. You might not have noticed, it takes something that's not to make you really realise of course. Think about it, before say The Strokes came along last year and made people spasm unrequitedly to rock 'n' roll all over again, where were all the fiercely independent misfits, the rebels, the stubborn snotty oiks, anyone that wasn't second-generation spawn of MTV? Well relax (not too much mind - don't slouch!), along with a growing ID-parade of reprobates that something that's not is making itself heard again. And it leaves even the likes of 'Is This It' whimpering in the corner. This is a record that makes no apologies whatsoever, not to those that possibly paved the way for them, not to anyone.
Careering into view with 'One Note' - essentially just that - like Iggy Pop and The Stooges in smarter clothes and with clearer intentions, mumbling something about "a block of chocolate" and making it sound like a threat, there is no mistaking what's in store. The beats are persistently unforgiving, the guitars light on their feet but brutal and sharp and vocals frothing like a slightly less fucked Mark E Smith (i.e. a good thing). While they're not completely shy of a tune, if there's a more direct route they'll take it. Though that not to say you won't want to holler 'Here We Go Again', 'Rudd', 'May B 1 Day' and the sleazy and faintly intimidating 'City Of Glass' right back at them. Uncompromising and unfaltering to the last vitriolic thud. (james berry)
dallas music guide
In terms of rock and roll bands, the best usually fall under one of two categories:
1. Americans who sound English/are primarily influenced by English bands.
2. English who sound American/are primarily influenced by American bands.
I could expand this theory of mine until I'm blue in the face, but you either agree with me or you don't. I'm not going to spend the majority of this review trying to sway your beliefs. However, the whole point of me bringing this point up as the first thought in my review is a very vital one. Ikara Colt don't just fall under category two, they ARE category two. This London-based four piece sound like they've not only ignored but detested all of the "Cool Britannia" resurrection/"Britpop is back" hoo-hah over the past few years. And good for them. Because if I hear one more time that Coldplay are the best that the British Isles have to offer, I'm going to give up listening to records altogether.
This debut album leads me to believe that Ikara Colt share the same sentiment. I can almost forgive Britain for the countless hours of sappy lyrics, whiny vocals, and retarted guitar effects that she's so generously given the rest of the world after listening to merely 30 seconds of Chat And Business. Each moment on the album is tense. And not just tense, but intense. Singer Paul Resende spits out each lyric with a disdain that either makes you feel like you're about to get your ass beat or that you're going to join the droogs and club someone in a dark underpass.
This is a proper art school band (yeah, that's where they really did meet) of today. They're disenchanted. They pack venom. They're not lo-fi in the lo-fi sense, but they certainly avoided cheesing up their sound with slick production techniques. You can hear traces of Fugazi, The Pixies, The Fall, and early Sonic Youth all throughout the album. Their second UK single, "One Note", is actually based around one note, taking that whole Dave Davies methodology to a new level. "Belgravia" has guitarist Claire Ingram churning and thrashing like the best of 'em and even providing sweet backing vocals to boot.
Chat And Business is probably the best soundtrack to insurrection I've heard all year. Now excuse me, I've got to grab a baseball bat and wait for Chris Martin to stroll through my underpass. (Christina Comley)
disorder magazine
Just over a year ago Disorder saw the end of an Ikara Colt first-on-the-bill set at the Dublin Castle. Not bad, we thought. Bit Fall-y and the singer needs to get away from the keyboard
and move around a bit. Little did it seem that from such modest beginnings Ikara Colt would become the leaders of the new wave of downright thrilling guitar based acts currently challenging the Coldplay/Travis hegemony.
But then Sink Venice was released and Ikara Colt demolished a tiny tent at Reading, showing all the idiot nu-metallars how three chords and yelling is done if you’re English and have a touch of panache. Ikara Colt were suddenly one of the most interesting and exciting new guitar bands in these fair isles. And now, a year on from that first encounter in a north London toilet, Ikara Colt release their debut album Chat and Business. Not many people would open their first long player with a song that is called and has just One Note, but for Ikara Colt it’s a statement of intent, a vow that this record will, in just over half an hour, rip apart your ears and restore your faith in guitars, shouting and dapper art rock attitude.
This is a band who force frustration, anger and bile through their music and spit it out, right in your face. But this isn’t the petty cross-with-the-parents angst that we’ve become accustomed from hearing
from American play-rockers. Ikara Colt have a channelled, intelligent anger, a call to arms and revolution against banality. The hyper-speed drumming, razor guitar, juddering bass and Paul Resende`s anguished yelp take no prisoners – refreshingly in an age of indifference this is music that can only be loved or hated; there’s no compromise, no half measures. Bishop’s Son, Sink Venice, At the Lodge; they all scream past.
drowned in sound (1st)
Ikara Colt are here to knock some life into our soulless mediocre British rock scene. Saying that things are looking up. The Cooper Temple Clause are killing music, Biffy Clyro match anything those U.S ‘emo’ guys produce and the 80s Matchbox B Line Disaster are as good as their name. Breaking the trend of AOR middle of the road acoustic guitar drivel has been more difficult than first expected but with ‘Chat and Business’ Ikara Colt have definitely produced a lofi punk rock masterpiece that will stand up as perfect music to drink snakie b’s to whilst flailing about in the way only white boy indie guitar fans can do. The ‘Colt sound like the result of years spent listening to the Jesus Lizard through a battered mono boombox and Sonic Youth b sides on cheap plastic vinyl. There are no slick production qualities, just dirty noisy pop-core screechings, a godsend after the barrage of records that sound like they were done through a computer and a karaoke machine. There is also an ‘Captain’ era Idlewild vibe, as if they had come straight from a skanky North London bedsit rather than a small Scottish fishing village.
‘Sink Venice’ was the most played song on the tannoy at last years Reading Festival, and is the closest anyone’s come to matching Thurston Moore’s nihilistic voice since Gibby Haynes last went into rehab. Recent single ‘Rudd’ has the beautiful paranoid trip down to a tee whilst ‘Pop Group’ sounds like the beginner’s guide to beating up a manufactured boy band. They may have what seems to the untrained ear as only one song (or ‘One Note’ even) but then there’s a distinctly Ramones quality to the one trick pony. ‘Chat and Business’ is essential, I urge you to buy this, stop listening to Ocean Colour Scene and sort your life out before you get hit by the bus of mediocrity. (Peter White)
drowned in sound (2nd)
'Chat & Business', eh? You may be expecting an urban chic exploration of 21st century business lunch ethics. You'd be wrong. What you get instead is shambolic buzzsaw guitars, drums that hurtle along faster than a train accident and bass that threatens to mug you if you listen to it for any length of time. Not to mention shouty vocals tackling subjects such as... Well, we're not too sure about that to be honest.
Ikara Colt peddle the kind of indie you read about in the NME, and know that only a handful of Camden worshipping students are going to love. You may be fond of it, but you can never quite bridge the gap between friend and bedmate. It holds you back with it's spoken verses and screamed choruses, and just when you think it's going to break into a sing along chorus, it doesn't. It just shouts at you some more.
Sure - Sink Venice has a semi-definable melodic moment in the chorus, but it's not enough to save them from indie bargain bin status. And no matter how much I respect the near perfect concept of this album (i.e. there is no concept) I can't bring myself to say that it shall still occupy a space in my CD player in a years time. Maybe i'll listen to it next time I happen to stray into Camden. Nevermind. It's got to be better than Linkin Park... (Conor Kinesis)
durham 21
It's difficult to understand why the critics went so crazy over The Strokes, when a British band have been peddling a similar fuzz-filled pseudo-70s rock for a while now. Ikara Colt may not possess the commercial charm of The Strokes, but their influences are similar.
'Chat and Business' is their debut album and forges 12 tracks (13 if you include the bonus one) out of post-Sex Pistols punk, verging perilously close to the sounds of Sonic Youth and their followers like Nirvana and At The Drive In. It's a pounding record, that opts for volume and pace rather than professionalism.
The three previously released singles, 'Sink Venice', 'One Note' and 'Rudd' are catchy romps that the band often struggle to control. The distorted guitar, throbbing bass, clattering drums and croaky vocals all batter the senses for a good 45 minutes. It could become tiring if the overall quality on display wasn't so high.
'City of Glass' is irrepressibly Sonic Youth inspired and is brilliant in its hazy repetition. 'May b 1 day', with its high-pitched bass and manic drums is equally strong as it crescendos to a crunching finale. 'All this has to add up' Paul Resende croons, and luckily it does.
The main difficulty that will keep people away is the length of the album and the continual, insistent punk patterns that leave little room for breath. Punk fans will love it, but others will find it tough to stomach. But Ikara Colt aren't trying to take over the world, they're just proving that us Brits can often do what those New Yorkers can do, perhaps even more successfully. Pushing the punk envelope. (Mike Haydock)
the fly
When a band tells you they want to be an underground band forever, and that they hate other bands who "sell-out and flog bundles of records", its generally because they're trying to justify their own existence as the forefront of some much over-looked but vital sub-culture that will save the life of anyone who understands it. Of course what they really mean is that their band is crap and only crap people like them. But art is generally bled by those with an over-inflated sense of self-impotrance, and the only ones who point out that shit is shit and not genius are those people in lovely successful bands - sell outs or otherwise. Even the press wont admit it - they like to pretend that these shitty little arse-wipe bands are cool and that people who dont like them can't be real music fans. Bullshit, cry we... The press... Er... Anyway, once in a while a band does come along that will never get anywhere at all but are in fact rather appealing. Stand up, Ikara colt, the first good band with no melodies to bring out an album in 2002. This is one quartet who couldn't give a monkeys about anything - and maybe they've misled us, but it does sound as if they would be talented enough to write a decent tune - they just don't want to. Instead they'll shout and shout and sometimes talk instead. The resulting album could have been made by The Velvet Underground if they'd been The Fall. But they werent, and instead it's been made by Ikara colt. (Johnny K)
fraction zero
Another garagey sounding band. This one a bit faster and more aggressive. A plus, is that they're
from England. Not sure why that should mater to me, but for some reason it does. Ha ha ha. Another
plus is that there's a blonde girl in the band with a cool haircut. Well that's the good things. The music
is cool too, sort of drum and bass driven straight out rock and roll, although the guitar manages to assert
itself quite nicely as well. The vocals gave me The Hives, if you know what I'm sayin! This is certainly
dark music, with a moody, restless feel. City Of Glass is my favorite song. The production sound is
abrasive, in your face and in a style that projects the songs forward at a steady pace. The chick's back up vocals sweeten up the sound a bit too. Ikara Colt have a nice style and a strong CD here.
funhouse
What is it about snotty British frontmen spitting mantras that makes me want to throw a steel chair through a London storefront— even though I've never been to London and have nothing against steel chairs or storefronts?
I only discovered The Fall a few months ago (I'm ashamed to admit it took this long), but I've quickly become addicted to Mark E. Smith's caustic chants about his house (Tempo or new), British class warfare, and—well, hell, I'm not sure exactly what the fuck "Rowche Rumble" is about, drugs and government I think, but Smith's half-smirking wild-call intro got stuck in my head and so riled me up that I partly blame him—along with alcohol and a fucked-in-the-head venue—for my own recent onstage temper tantrum. It was a groovy number, indeed.
And so then, yes, the subject at hand, Ikara Colt: they've got this snotty British mantra thing down. Take the first song, "One Note," on their debut, Chat and Business: about midway through it breaks down into this anti-pep rally call, repeated enough times to barge inside your head and make a mess, leave you raising a middle-finger and yelling: "I head against stage then do it! I plead against state then do it!" The rest of the song? Well "One Note" purees like a detached propeller in a pond of shrapnel along a shore filled with leather-jacketed mohawkers rattling bonfire hi-hats and plastic-bucket snares. That means that yeah, Ikara Colt can epitomize UK Punk. But they've also got a serious Sonic Youth thing going on, too (after all SY was big across the pond before they were here). You can so picture Thurston Moore singing one of the refrains— "Short wave radio! Cheap magazines!"—of the hyper-poppy "Rudd", which is all angular lead-lines and engine-gunning breakdowns, as are "Bishop's Son" and "Belgravia", the latter sporting vocals by guitarist Claire Ingram—that's right, they have a girl in the band, too. And did I mention the members of Ikara Colt met as art school students?
So yeah the Sonic Youth parallels are very strong but Ikara Colt keeps it simpler and more visceral on the whole, taking only from the best parts of SY, their most directly aggressive numbers, and spiking it with a little more gasoline, a little more 'tude. The album's production is remarkably restrained and taut, given the noise: it never over-indulges in over-dubs and is actually kinda sparse and affecting on the slower tracks, the haunting "City of Glass" and the not-quite-trancey-dancey "May B 1 Day."
But fuck that—slower tracks? Chat and Business is all about frenetic beatings on downtuned skins and glass-shattering cymbals, the underworld basslines of "Sink Venice" and "Here We Go Again," the well-dressed malevolence of its relentless guitaring, those fucking accents and mantras: "Chat and business" repeated like brainwashing hypnotics on "After This."
Fuck Chat and Business—this is Argument and Looting, this is graffitied walls and bandaged wrists and discarded syringes and bloody rocks and black trenchcoats and and and—
I plead against state then do it! (PV)
gravity girl
As little as a year ago, an album like Ikara Colt's Chat and Business would've barely registered in the mass pop-cultural consciousness, but in the hype-Strokin' rock-is-the-new-rock climate of this day, the English quartet's raw, garage-beat sturm-and-clang is sure to be touted as a work of great greatness. And Ikara Colt come at garage-rock through the prism of Sonic Youth covering I Wanna Be Your Dog, kicking out the contorted compositional jams with a thuggish, no-wave-ish belligerence that harks of a No New York influence; even if tracks like Belgravia barely escape the later-down-the-line looming spectre of Kill Yr Idols Kim & co. At their best, Ikara Colt take control of such spirits and let these New York City ghosts animate their craft, keeping things far from flowery as riffs are kept to being nothing less than 'blistering', the thumped-out rhythm-section rather recalling early Fall, with vocalist Paul Resende's screeching rock-sneers probably owing as much to Mark E Smith as they do to His Thurston-ness.
groove - translated
The frenetic slugger rock with belonging lifestyle as the old punks delivered about 30 years ago has in the year of 2000 been re invented and transformed into upstarts with guitar in hand from both USA and Europe (not least Sweden) into our time’s most rebellious rock music. Ikara Colt are in the movement. They kick out post punk by sluggish hand movements and good looking clothes. And it works.
In it’s attack these Londoners are American, for example I feel a big relation with At The Drive in. They especially succeed in tracks such as One note, Rudd, Pop Group, Here We go Again and Sink Venice to create complete speed hysteria that even still sitting yuppies in the suburbs can predict- I’m convinced that with pure feeling they close the windows and make sure that their kids haven’t been wakened by the alarm from town. And one of the albums best tracks, the funky May B 1 Day, is more delicate and a secret side of the frontal crash that Ikara Colt make. In short: Chat And Business can and should be your invisible friend in the big town jungle, till the sun comes out again. (Gary Andersson)
halo 17
“Art Punk”, is to me, an intriguing, and somewhat paradoxical concept. Isn’t “punk”, a brash, blue collar, anti-establishment reactionary movement, supposed to be directly contradictory to “art, an often conservative, upper class pursuit renowned for it’s intellectual snobbery? One would think that art punk would be something like trying to play Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb using only three-note powerchords.
Evidently, however, it was wrong, because they are the only two words that I can come up with to describe Ikara Colt’s sound. It’s definitely punk rock of the classic sort, it’s as aggressive and obnoxious as anything that The Sex Pistols or The Clash could ever have come up with. Yet it’s also art-rock, featuring clever lyrics and a running theme of the 1930s view of the future. It’s hard to describe the sound, perhaps if you think of a sort of evil version of Sonic Youth then you’ll be on the right track.
In fact, I’d say that the three bands that sound closest to what this is are Sonic Youth, Joy Division, and perhaps Iggy Pop. I know that those sounds are a long way apart, but it’s the best that I can do. It’s angry stuff, while listening to some of the more aggressive moments, you’ll want to burst out your front door and start burning corporate posters and advertisments, yet at the same time, they’re definitely skilled musicians.
An example of this is the heavily Sonic Youth sounding Rudd, in which vocalist Paul Resende snarls belligerently, “Short wave radio! Cheap magazines!”, backed up by some incredibly energetic guitar noises from guitarist Claire Ingram. On the other hand, the fact that they’re not just noise-merchants is explored in City of Glass, an understated (for a punk band, that is) song, which lurches about sickeningly on top of a peculiar melodica riff. In my opinion, City of Glass is hands down the best song on this record, taking a break from shrieking, angry yelling, and having a go at a more melodic song, with lyrics that rather than sounding angry, sound almost regretful, as if at the failure and corruption of the revolution.
Young, angry, and really pissed off – yep, all the ingredients for a great punk record are here. Normally when bored middle-class students form a band, what gets churned out is garbage in the mould of Blink 182, but in this case, they fully justify their time in a recording studio. You can forgive the juvenile politics and adolescent attitude when a band sounds this good. Recommended.
- Lauren Harding-Healy
Addendum: It should also be noted that the album comes with stickers, so you can decorate the cover of it however you please. Gimmicky, but still fun.
hi-fi plus
As garage bands move into the chart it clears out space in the underground for younger, harder, more subversive groups. Groups like Ikara Colt. They appeared a few months ago with their single "Rudd" which is the second song of the superb opening one-two on this blistering album, exploding with huge sledgehammer guitars, earth-shaking drums and synchronised shouting. Possibly the most surprising aspect of the album is that it works so well. For a band that rely so heavily on the personal charisma of their front man, and the sweaty energy and intensity of the band as a whole, a debut album often sounds tired and considered. Instead this sounds like it was recorded in one incredibly violent and energetic session. Chat and business is a remedy, a shot in the arm to counteract the sugary aftertaste of Pop Idol. They should be huge, if there was justice in this world they would be huge, but chat and business for all its energy, for all its confidence and talent is not easy listening. If you look like Pete Townsend there are pretty much only two directions you can take in life. Luckily Ikara Colt chose to be in a band.
illinois entertainer
Released earlier this year in the U.K., chat and business has created quite a buzz overseas, ladning London's Ikara Colt two successful singles and a U.S. release via Epitaph later this month. The band met in 1999, and although threeo f its four members are former art students, there are very few bells and whistles on its debut.
Chat And Business is punk rock as it should be intense and to the point. Ikara Colt wraps Fugazi-esque chaos around an Euro-rock demeanour, sounding like Kent on some serious nose candy. The band is content to often ride on single notes, letting singer Paul Resende hurl his anthemic horuses. "A new day is dawning/ All change in the city of glass," he groans on the albums's best song "City Of Glass."
As the album climaxes midway with "Sink Venice," a powerhouse battle hymn in which Resende repeatedly yells the song's title, the band does its best to try and convince us all the masterpieces are crap. But no one is fooled, as Ikara Colt owes a great deal to its influences. The band's tragic flaw is that is is far from groundbreaking.
Then again, who cares. the same goes for The White Stripes and The Hives, and some of the U.K. press have already added Ikara Colt to the list of bands "saving rock 'n' roll". Punk veterans may turn their noses up, but someone has to teach the kids how to rock. (Joseph Simek)
ink 19
Aggressive post-hardcore from another bunch of middle class art-school Brits, endorsed by John Peel and regularly lumped together with far more original and challenging bands like mclusky and The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster. They're all very cool people, assumedly, but let's not hold that against them. Riding high on a wave of garage retro, courtesy of The Strokes and The Hives, Ikara Colt deliver their rock with a boastful swagger but still fail to generate too much excitement. They do have some good things going on, mind, and both Paul Resende's deadpan vocals and Claire Ingram's brilliant guitar playing and awesome backing/contra vocals add to the tense excitement of their finest moments. The pounding "At The Lodge" and the hysterical, driven "Pop Group" are both great tracks, and despite its lame title, "May B 1 Day" is great as well, all churning and angular electro-punk. However, they seem to favor style over substance ever so often, with songs offering little in the way of neither resistance nor excitement, and just the dull comfort of, precisely, The Strokes. (Stein Haukland)
kerrang!
Debut album from sexy, combustive London post-punks.
Channeling acrid, early '80s post-punk - urgernt rhythms, clammy basslines and guitars like broken glass - through the kamikaze intensity of At The Drive-In, Ikara Colt's live shows burn themselves into your retinas with their blistering purity. That recklessness echoes throughout 'Chat And Business', but there's something missing. The dive bombing breakdown of opener 'One Note' sets the tone for a blaze of pulse-racing rock 'n' roll, Paul Resende's Tannoy-vocals barking blank verses of disaffection over Dominic Young's relentless heart-attack beats, while tunes like 'Rudd' and the sour 'Pop Group' twist the formula into neat new shapes. But there's something ultimately suffocating and one-paced about this record, one good idea ultimately run into the ground. Like most debut albums, in fact (Sonic Youth's first both rocked and sucked for similar reasons). Ikara Colt's next one will kick severe ass, though. KKK (Stevie Chick)
loaded
Sworn enemies of slack-tousered, knob-pierced nu-metal tomfoolery, these London mod-punk mentalists sound like The Strokes with a crack habit, Mark E Smith's delinquent son on vocals and the venomous attitude of the early Manics. their last single "Sink Venice" could in fact be a title dreamed up by Nicky Wire. As you will have guessed it rocks like a pitbull with troublesome haemorrhoids. BETTER THAN: Linkin Park, Hybrid Theory
manchester music bbc
On paper, Ikara Colt sound like a good idea. Take four art students, throw in instruments, pretension and garage rock leanings, stand back and watch them become darlings of the indie underground. Unfortunately the reality isn't quite as promising.
It’s obvious why their abrasive sound has prompted John Peel and the music weeklies to gush over Ikara Colt, but Kerrang’s claim that that ‘this is nothing less than pure genius’ is pushing the plaudits a bit.
Each of their songs has a repetitive vocal line, which after a couple of minutes becomes more irritating than exciting. When coupled with garage rock cymbals and spiky guitars, it’s enough to set your teeth on edge.
The tracks appear to melt into one long sinister cacophony, with the exception of the slower ‘City of Glass’ where bored distorted vocals warn, ‘just don’t speak what was said, don’t you know you’re out of your depth’.
‘Chat and Business’ is linear in sound, concept and right down to its tastefully arty black and white sleeve. You could imagine Ikara Colt as the house band at Andy Warhol’s Factory, given that they sound so British, bleak and bored. (Natalie Boxall)
the mirror
This London 4 piece arrives in a smoking trail of punk thrash, deep seated paranoia and scowling hatred for the coporate hell of modern life. There's zero finesse to their sonic fire but the impact is striking. When the dust clears (City Of Glass), the Colt is little more than a one trick pony, but this is still recommended bareback riding for anyone who wants to kick up a rumpus. ***
montclair times
Sounding a bit like their fellow British countrymen and Joy Division poster children Interpol, with a helping of New York darlings The Liars, Ikara Colt help blur the line between garage rock and punk, while not rehashing “Louie, Louie.” Released at the tail end of last year’s new wave of garage rock, “Chat and Business” blends fuzzed-out guitars with creepy, hollow vocals that borrow more from Sonic Youth than The Strokes.
On “City of Glass,” the London quartet let the bass drone on and on with repeating lyrics and a taste of over-driven leads. “Pop Group” shreds with a distorted surf riff over tinny vocals, sounding as if singer Paul Resende sang through a beat-up old amp, and just stuck a microphone in front of it to pick up the noise.
Album highlights include “Sing Venice,” a jumpy staccato number that features drum roll after drum roll and vocal harmonies from guitarist Claire Ingram. “Here We Go Again” comes off like a Black Flag song, with jazzy hard-core guitar parts and a down-tuned rhythm section.
While on initial listen “Chat and Business” might come off as an underproduced noise rock record, the layering noise and melody can’t be any more slick and beautiful, which alone should keep Ikara Colt out of the garage and on the big stage. (george koroneos)
nme
Business is unusual, and business is good
Un-marketable, un-mouldable and un-fuckable: Ikara Colt exist because 99.9 per cent of everything else is shit and getting shitter. We are at the absolute other end of the spectrum from Stereophonics here. 'Chat And Business' is based on the Colt's oft-expressed and entirely admirable oppinion that, after five years, all bands should be taken out and shot. Before they get old, fat, smug and soft-handed. No compromises made to daytime radio play - all you get is relentless minimalism and a spitting hatred of pop mediocrity.
Put it this way, if you don't loathe Starsailor and Travis with every fibre of your being, then there's no fucking chance what-so-bleeding-ever you'll like Ikara Colt. They're a sort of twat-filter. And this, by the very fact of its existance, is brilliant. 8/10 (Steven Wells)
nme
albums of the year 44
if chat and business were released in 1979, it would have been a post-punk milestone to rank with PiL's 'metal box'. Released in 2002, however, it was genuinely without peer: the sound of pure disgust pressed to vinyl
now
With so many contemporary groups latching on to the early 80s post-punk vibe and offering faint recreations of the Gang of Four, Wire, Au Pairs, Joy Division and ESG concepts, Ikara Colt naturally figured they should stake their claim to the Fall sound before someone else jacked it. Sadly, there is no Kicker Conspiracy or Totally Wired here, but fortunately for the London art college clique, most journalists assessing their performances and recordings don't seem to be aware of what Mark E. Smith has been doing for the past two decades. If they were, there'd likely be far fewer gushing reviews of Chat And Business heralding it as a revolution in sound, and more people writing it off as a cheeky prank. But better a lame Fall redux than a spot-on Spandau Ballet. (Tim Perlich)
ok magazine
After a sever shortage of real indie bands, like London buses, some excellent ones are all arriving at once. You'll either love or hate these art-skool-style punks who channel all their energy into making demented music. But they don't seem like the kind of group who give a damn what anyone thinks. It's a refreshing attitude. ***
only angels have wings
This album has been released for about 6 months now and I totally ignored it, thinking Ikara Colt was just another one-time post-punk group quickly compared to Gang of Four because some would-be rock critic said so. It is appropriate to stress the fact that they are much more exciting than The Liars, Radio 4 or The awful Libertines.
Ikara Colt has been categorized as art students playing punk-rock / rock’n’roll with late 70’s references. I don’t know whether they made their album sleeve on their own and whether you need to study art to make such a sleeve but the artwork undeniably looks fine (there are tiny stickers of black and white photographs which you can stick in tiny white squares with cinematic captions on the sleeve.) Concerning the references, there are much more anchored in a particular mid-80’s british musical scene embodied for instance by The Fall and its agitator leader.
The sound is sort of lo-fi but they wanted it to be lo-fi. I mean let’s not kid ourselves, Epitaph is not a Third World label, they could have had a neat production if they wanted to. Anyway, the sound is nonetheless appealing. There is a great sense of urgency throughout the album which is right away brought to the fore: ‘One Note’ opens the album with the minimalist post-punk experience of a one note song while “Rudd” is a desperate and fierce teenage noisy punk complaint with guitar lines full of energy à la fugazi (Red Medicine). Even though some tracks evoke Gang of Four, the tempos are often quicker (“one note”, “bishop’s son”, “pop group”).
My favourite songs from Chat & Business are those sounding like The Fall in the mid 80’s (This Nation’s Saving Grace, The Frenz Experiment, I am Kurious Orange). The astonishing “Belgravia” and the insanely catchy “Sink Venice” (echoed by “Here We Go Again”) seem like relics of The Fall Brix Smith era even though Ikara Colt’s dictions are less sharp and incisive and even though their music is more approachable. This impression may be due to Claire Ingram’s back voices added to Paul Resende’s intonations, midway between singing and ranting. For example, “May b 1 Day” strongly evokes one of Mark E Smith’s purple passage: “Big New Prinz”. “At the Lodge” inclines towards 90’s The Fall (eg Middle-Class Revolt). “City of Glass” might be reminiscent of PIL to some listeners, less dismal though.
“After This” is an awkward but successful attempt to set a pink flag inbetween The Fall’s rants, Fugazi’s sharp guitar lines & Sonic Youth’s guitar build-up by gradations.
As it often happens when the band is signed to a capitalist label, the latter – namely Epitaph (unfortunately for old Bad Religion fans)- decides to release the album again enhanced by a second cd that contains here 4 songs (Basic instructions ep – which is by the way totally superfluous). I really disapprove of these commercial marketing methods that consider the listener just as a consumer. WE DON’T CONSUME MUSIC, WE LISTEN TO IT as Blacklisted Igor puts it with a nasty grin (hey, let’s make a button with this slogan). Anyway, this time it enabled me to discover a good band. Sometimes we miss a group and discover them 5 or 10 years later. This would have been a pity. Assuredly. Considering their kind of music, we may all the more fairly hope that Ikara Colt is worth seeing live. (Seb Wood)
organ
highly strung, that's what they are, it's almost a fake ideal and they could so easily fall fall fall - but then we need a new fall so so much and no way is your mum ever going to say "i like that ikara colt, they sound like Rod Stewart". Almost everything is too polite, travis are out there for godsake! This is weird, it'sfractured, it's not meant to be understood, it's not meant to crossover. This sounds like a work of insane genius, though it does sould like they're still trying to figure out the genius of their wired wired wired musical insanity. Look, it's simple, they're the new Fall, we need a new Fall, the last one can't possibly go on much longer, enjoy the old one while you can and celebrate this one toooooo - and don't go thinking we're talking clones here, there'd be no point, Ikara Colt are on of the finest new bands we have around right now.
philadelphia weekly
Finally the punk rockers are studying dadaism. A riotous blast of single-chord fury and lyrical non- sequiturs, Ikara Colt's debut, Chat and Business, was one of the bright spots in a dreary rock 'n' roll year. Thankfully free of all idiotic Rock Is Back! signifiers, the British quartet dispenses volcanic mini-anthems with speed and precision. Vocalist Paul Resedne enlivens the proceedings with the most baffling verse this side of Mark E. Smith, ordering a "cracked Manhattan" in "Bishop's Son" and warning "crossed wires will put you on hold" in "Pop Group." It's like he's short-circuiting, spitting out every odd word that ever got lodged in his consciousness. The songs fuse the oblique progressions of Sonic Youth with the volume and force of the Damned. Ikara Colt slams the door on pouty-mouthed pretty boys and warbling antifolkers. The age of image is over. The Hex Enduction Hour is about to begin. (J. Edward Keyes)
pitchfork
They're perfect-- maybe too perfect. It's as if Ikara Colt ran down a checklist from the back of the NME on how to be a British punk band: They met at art school, they dress sharp, and they sound glum. They crib from the best post-punk and noise-rock, and every track on their debut gets a perfect score for pop songform and speedy hook delivery. They're a hit in Britain, and if they become chic enough, one of them might land a date with Kelly Osbourne.
So what's wrong with them, aside from the fact I could pack up their album in a single paragraph? Ikara Colt are the latest straight-up decent punk act to get shipped across the pond, and they're a genuine example of "authentic rock": Distorted guitars, curt lyrics and a pummeling rhythm section, funneled into concise, riffy singles. Even the recording sounds just as it should, lo-fi but clear, raw but just short of spastic.
Chat and Business is undeniably solid, but we don't give high scores for just doing the job, and the album has shortcomings. At the top of the list, it doesn't have much personality. You'll have to forgive me; I've never seen the band live, watched them on a talk show or read about their sex lives in a British newspaper. For all I know, they could be a font of charisma back where they come from. I only have the album to work with, and it's dangerously familiar. It's derivative, and too easily defined by the "recommended if you like" list it invites.
Vocalist Paul Resende is both a strength and a shortcoming. You'll recognize his style from the work of Mark E. Smith and many others, and he has the chops to get the job done; he has a masculine scream, and the right voice for shout-singing. But the conviction sounds calculated: When he spits out the lyric "chat and business," he drips contempt, but I don't sense that he hates chat or business any more than most people. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he has a buddy who really despises chat and business, and Resende's just falling in line.
The music also falls in line, between Sonic Youth and The Fall, but at least they do it well. If nothing else, the band is tight and energetic. Jon Ball's basslines throb and flail, and guitarist Claire Ingram has both the riffs and the noise. The opener, "One Note", rages harder and sprays more saliva than anything that follows; Ingram engrossingly circles around slower, drone-inflected tracks like "City of Glass", but the short blast-off chorus on "Sink Venice" makes it the stand-out track. For some variety, Ikara Colt plug a drum machine into a couple of tracks, but this is purely cosmetic. They've used electronic sounds more boldly elsewhere-- for example, the seedy remake of this album's "May B 1 Day" on their Basic Instruction EP-- but on Chat and Business they tip-toe around them without taking any risks. The novelty's welcome, but this is still a guitar band: Ikara Colt are strongest when Ingram's in charge.
Chat and Business won't bring you down, nor will it kick your ass. It's the kind of album that's never better than its last single, but my complaints will sound like stodgy nit-picking if you go nuts for the guitars. This album has everything you could want from a modern art-punk band: Next time, they should give us even more.
(Chris Dahlen)
playlouder
Ikara Colt is what happens when kids have instruments and don't give a fuck about selling records. The Simon Cowell end of the industry (which there's room for, before you start) wouldn't touch this shit with a cattle prod, so thank fuck for funny little labels like Fantastic Plastic, who've done the good thing and not only put this record out, but put some cash into it as well. Geezers! You be happy, fucker, 'cos right from the off this is guitar noise to please even the most disillusioned (of which your humble hack was, briefly, a member). In our day it was Carter and the Senseless Things and Nirvana and all that, now you lucky young swine have the Colt and the Matchbox and the Parkies. And as they were there first with the plastic, the Colt are the Daddies.
This is a smart LP. From the opening chunder of 'One Note', a mean bass riff and some grade A wittering, their throb is pure and their thrum sweet. Ikara Colt have been accused of having "no tunes". On first listen you might agree. By third, you're humming along (if you're not hopping up and down like a bum with his feet on fire that is). Fifth you're hooked. It's all deceptively simple - hammer riffs out of the twangy instruments, tear life and death from the tubs, shout and mutter and pontificate over the top. It's punk, basically, but punk with the hindsight that being born in the late seventies/early eighties brings. Punk with some new ideas, a new way of making noises with old tools. 'City Of Glass' sounds like heroin comedowns on the street in the rain. 'Sink Venice' is the ceiling being torn from the venue. 'Chat And Business' is piss and shit and aching tendons, a manifesto that says Just Fucking Do It. Then it does. (Adam Alphabet)
playlouder
albums of the year number 12
Art school visionaries formed by their wrist-fucked drummer, Ikara Colt spit bile in a manner unseen in recent times. Agitated, cranky, crunked and cool, we love this band so much we wanna have their abortions. Banned by Reading, ignored (until very recently) by mainstream media, too fucking hardcore for their own good, Ikara Colt are a band we should nurture, treasure, and boogie to, because they will make one of the defining records of the century one day. And whilst this record wasn't quite THAT, it was fucking banging nonetheless, a feat in a guitar world so dull and sexless.
popmatters - part 1
"A new dawn is coming," a feedback-laced Paul Resende, lead singer of Ikara Colt, snarls resignedly on "City of Glass" off his and his bandmates' debut album Chat and Business, "All change in the city of glass." For a band that names at least one of their songs ("Sink Venice") for a 1930s futurist manifesto, this is an almost expected sentiment. This new dawn appears to be related to the neo-rock movement that made the pretty boys of the Strokes and the Hives so very, very rich. Forget about Belle and Sebastian or Badly Drawn Boy (the latter of which is very vocally hated by Ikara Colt), these art- school punks shriek in your ear. Go back to those halcyon days when punk meant young Iggy Pop beating himself physically and emotionally on stage, when Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen locked themselves inside the Chelsea Hotel, when heroin and rock went hand in hand. That's the tradition Ikara Colt calls to mind, and they do a hell of a tribute job on Chat and Business.
Most prominent among Ikara Colt's influences are Sonic Youth and Joy Division. Couple that druggy, growling aesthetic with the vim and vigor of a Saturday night pub fight, and you have some notion of what Ikara Colt sounds like. Speedy, volatile, spittle- dripping, and, above all, filled with an energy unique to frustrated and bored college students, the London-based foursome enjoy a pretty large (and angry!) following in England. They've already become critics' darlings for their clever lyrics and enthusiastically thrashing guitars and pounding drums. And Chat and Business is, to a large extent, an exciting album. It's hard to deny the adrenaline rush of, say, the heavily Sonic Youth-sounding "Rudd"; when Resende yells, "Short wave radio! Cheap magazines!" accompanied by guitarist Claire Ingram's faded yelps, you kind of want to run outside and tear down the billboards and posters for any musician who doesn't have fiery vitriol coursing through their engorged veins. Then you remember that you've felt that way before. Didn't Thurston Moore once make you want to break stuff, too?
My personal favorite song on the album, "City of Glass", lurches discordantly on the shoulders of a bizarre melodica riff augmented by Resende's both gruff and boyish vocals. It's a truly Joy Division moment when Resende reigns in his lung-busting to create a strangely understated song (well, understated for punk, that is). You can almost imagine him flailing about psychotically onstage like Ian Curtis. But "City of Glass" isn't a rip-off; far from it. Resende sings, in this song, like someone who, instead of hanging himself like Curtis, has stuck around longer and seen a lot more disappointment. The new day that's dawning isn't a necessarily happy one, after all, no matter how welcome it may be. While Ikara Colt is gagging for change, musically, politically, and aesthetically, they also know how stagnant movements get. It's as though they see beyond the revolution to its inevitable later failure.
popmatters - part 2
And that's why there's really no better movement for comparison with Ikara Colt than futurism, or other, eventually dead movements of the classic avant-garde. Indeed, Ikara Colt beg to be compared to such anarchic artistic change; in "Sink Venice", they call for the destruction of art galleries and cathedrals in the historic city, much as Marinetti and his counterparts advocated a destruction of the artistic icons of the past. Ikara Colt very deliberately place themselves in a different canon than the bands they will inevitably be compared to: the Strokes, the White Stripes, the Vines, et al. Certainly, they deserve more renown than the intensely overrated Casablancas and their ilk; these fuck-off rock and roll kids have more smarts and attitude in a broken drumset than a thousand Strokes albums. They know how short-lived they might be, and they're clever enough to propose that that's exactly what they want. Movements or bands that go on for too long lose any credibility they had to start with. That's why the enormous debt Ikara Colt owe to bands like Sonic Youth and Joy Division can be so frustrating; in basing their music so much on that of the past, aren't they, in some way, contradicting themselves?
Still, they're young, they're angry, and they're not going to take it anymore. All the members of Ikara Colt are so damn good at what they do, it's not that difficult to forgive their sometimes-adolescent, not quite fully formed politics. After all, feeling like you're 17 again can be a really, really good time. If you experience that with a smart band, as opposed to the aforementioned bland supposed saviors of rock and roll, you might even still respect yourself in the morning. (Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece)
punkbands.com
Featuring one of the coolest cd inserts in the history of rock, Ikara Colt has with the help of Epitaph put out an album sure to be classified at a breakthrough. Formed in London after meeting in art school, these guys have a tight yet complex sound similar to acts making a name for themselves like The Hives, The Vines, and The [International] Noise Conspiracy. Now's the time to have a sound like that, and Ikara Colt does it with their own unique twist on things which will be evident once you give it a listen. "Chat and Business" has gotten rave reviews overseas and I won't be suprised if the same thing happens in the States. 45 minutes of punk rock geniusness is not something you find in every release, but it's something that Epitaph seems to be doing very well lately. These guys get my recommendation to all fans of punk rock and music in general. What are you waiting for? It even comes with a set of stickers you can plaster on the cd cover! (Timmy)
punknews
"Ikara Colt exist because 99.9 percent of everything else is shit and getting shittier." -www.epitaph.com
Based on claims like this one, and several others I've read in a variety of both mainstream and independent publications, (either web or print) I thought this record was going to be about as brilliant as the second coming of Christ himself. (whenever that may be)
What I got however was nothing but a steaming pile of mediocrity, smelling very similar to the recent heap of "minimalist-garage-retro-revivalist-rock" acts that have been plundering the radiowaves for the past year or so.
I'll make this short and sweet. If you're currenly a fan of either The Strokes, The Hives, Division of Laura Lee or The White Stripes for that matter, you may very well find this record an aural delight. If however, (like me) you feel like you'll puke if you have to hear another "we use vocal distortion on every last song and play our instruments badly" copycat of a band, steer clear of this record.
In conclusion I'll try my best to actually describe this record. (seems all I've done so far is express my utter disdain that this record was ever pressed.) Vocal distortion a-la "insert horrible garage band of choice here" smothered in a wall of compressed, undynamic guitar work,combined with old school punk beats and horrible basement production. Also, they're from L.A. and sound British. Bad, bad music... Wait did I say 'music'?...
This record scores a 2. And the only reason I'm giving it that much is because I was able to use the stickers from the CD cover to keep the battery in my T.V. remote from falling out. Also, the disc protects my new coffee table from those nasty beverage stains.
q
Debut from London-based quartet named after an imaginary racing horse.
Blame the abolition of student loans or even Fat Les, but art schools are no longer the hotbed of rock'n'roll insurrection that they were in the days of The Who or Malcolm McLaren. An exception arrives with Londoners Ikara Colt, who value clamour over catchiness or competence, pinch the odd title (Sink Venice) from 1930s Futurist manifestos and tout a nervy, caffeinated rattle. So Paul Resende yelps like Mark E Smith's estuary-accented grandson, the co-ed vocal barrage of Belgravia resurrects the vim of riot grrrls Huggy Bear and the eerie, melodica-driven whine of City Of Glass recalls vintage Sonic Youth. Thrilling stuff. (Pat Long)
rockpile
Chock full of guitars, shouting and art-rock attitude, Ikara Colt's debut full length, Chat and Business, is an aggressive 12-song set of vintage, punk-influenced rock 'n' roll. Incorporating vocal ranges sounding at points lika a young Thurston Moore and at others like an angrier Mark E. Smith, singer Paul Colt integrates his varied influences into a hodgepodge of jagged vocal harmonies. Ultimately, his singing style complements the band's angular, Pixies stomp-the songs are simple, fast, fun and played with drop-dime precision. While it is obvious Ikara Colt isn't reinventing the wheel, the band finds its niche in coarse, startling punk power. Future efforts promise unlimited potential, as Ikara Colt's first effort treads pretty damn near close to a five-star rating. (Dan Pastorius)
rock sound
Wonder if this means Mark E Smith can retire at last. For the last 25 years he's carried the torch alone for a certain version of the spirit of punk. Now, all of a sudden, Ikara Colt have grabbed it out of his wrinkly old hands and sprinted off into the distance. 'Chat And Business', you'll gather, is music in a hurry: unsympathetic, hard, sharp, pulse-racing music. Lyrics are spa out, coldly phrased. Bass-lines are mostly basic as they come, bombing along, counting time in mini explosions. Riffs provide the most unsophisticated kind of excitment, machine-gunning over 'Rudd' and 'One NOte', self-combusting deliriously behind 'Sink Venice'. This is an album that doesn't have time for anything except the essentials. In '78 bands like Wire and The Fall thought this was the sound of the future. Unexpectedly they've been proved right. 4/5 (Trevor Baker)
rolling stone
On its solid American debut, British art-punk quartet Ikara Colt slings thirteen tracks of cinematic superfuzz that conjure the sound and cynicism of early Eighties Fall. Highlight: the synth intro to "At The Lodge" that explodes into a distorted throb of electric guitar (Christian Hoard and David Malley)
sentimentalist
The American invastion of the U.K. music charts has led to a brilliantly argentine musical backlash, emanating mostly from that hotbed of creative activist malcontent: the English art school. One such institution saw London's Ikara Colt form in 1999, along with their proucrement of local acclaim from media and common folk alike, and their shows opening for the likes fo Idlewild and Six by Seven. At last, the band released their debut Chat and Business here this fall. Though the band's first CD, it exudeas an aura of artistic originality, a quality that repels most conformist modern music. Paul Resende's vocals rarely stray from a alackadaisically cool four-note range, their sole complication being a shroud of AM radio broadcast-like indie fuzz. Claire Ingram's ingenuously basic yet ingeniously unique guitar playing follows suit and occasionally lends dulcet backing vocals to sweeten the simplicity, as in the stand-out single, "Sink Venice". While Ikara Colt's treble half perches discontentedly in dreamy monophony, their fuming rhythm section raves dymanically at the more tortured end of the artistic temperament spectrum. Punk-tinged eighty notes from Jon Ball's bass bounce under tracks like ringing, elastic juggernauts while Dominic Young ravages his drum kit with a devastating Jove-like fury that honestly must be seen during the band's outstanding live show in order to be believed. Ikara Colt's Chat and Business is a creative practise in atypical innovativeness, its stream-of-conscious lyrics and guitar phrases rousing themind and its harrying bottom-end section reenergizing the body. When Ikara Colt import their distinctive thinking man's garage style into North American early in the new year, they will hopefully serve as forerunners for a british bohomian invasion. (Leah K. Nchama)
sound the sirens
Ikara Colt hails from the United Kingdom and play a no frills, minimalist form of punk rock that takes few cues and shortcuts to success. Their fuzz filled guitar sound, almost lo-fi vocals and potent sense of “no bullshit” fills a definite void in what we’ve seen in both the mainstream and underground. From the mesh of drum and guitar of the opening track, “One Note” to the dominating bass line and insistent vocals of “Sink Venice”, they scream out, grab you by the ears and swing you round and round in a whirlwind of pure punk and rock goodness.
Some may say they evoke memories of The Clash and/or early to late 70’s Brit punk – and while those influences can be heard on this record, they certainly add a lot of personal flair to the mix. The punchy arrangement of “Pop Group” to the spy like wavering of “May B 1 Day” prove that in the absence of pop melodies and harmonies, you are able to create a loud, grating but enjoyable and dangerous record.
If three chords, yelling and aggression were the perfect formula for creating a sense of musical chaos – then Epitaph’s Ikara Colt are teachers in a room full of unwitting, comatose students who, in a short time will receive their much overdue lesson in intellectual anger and urgency. (Billy Maulana)
spin
The British music press is running out of exclamation points for these snotty art-school punks.
Likes: Sonic Youth, the Fall, panicky guitar outbursts, mop tops, mod tailoring, and diatribes about destroying European capitals. Dislikes: just about everything else.
the stereo effect
There’s no point attacking a band based on the fact that they have influences…and furthermore, there’s no point raising the flag because those influences rear their lovely heads. Ikara Colt have done the dirty work, playing gigs nationwide and becoming the darlings of John Peel. They’ve been compared to Sonic Youth and The Fall – but then no one struck down the remote possibilities that a band who basically covered Wire (see also Elastica) would have a moment in the spotlight.
Chat and Business is the first full-length release from the London four-piece, and despite the conspiracy to keep it out of the charts (FYI: it includes stickers for a self-decorating sleeve, and apparently that ain’t in the rulebook), there’s been a buzzin’ goin’ on. The band have been accused of lacking tunes, and to be fair, there isn’t a bit of Hard Days Night to be found, but the definition of “tune” has expanded since the days of puritanical musical analysis, and Ikara Colt have given hope to the fast-fading world of proper guitar rock.
Album opener, “One Note,” cuts to the chase with a machinegun rhythm section, and fuzzed everything, off-kilter melodies that run off with all the radio-friendly guitars that stand in the way. The drumming is fast, the vocals are furious and all of a sudden, there’s a pretty angry mob at the door bouncing along to “Sink Venice” or tearing the house down to the best of “Here We Go Again.” Aside from the easy comparisons, there’s an element of Californa-yay punk in there, and not the Johnny Come Lately’s that are still bouncing around on MTV’s glitter-filled award shows, but the stuff of spit, bile, and the blood of skate videos circa 1986. There’s nothing terribly new on the album, but that’s not to say that it’s not fresh or exciting, but more like scurrilously reliving the best bits of your black sheep brother’s album collection in an attempt to needlessly worry your parents. There’s something much more admirable in that then writing an album that your parents want to know the words to. (Little Trouble Girl)
the stranger
Some records seethe with alley cat aggression and primitive, quickie-around-the-corner lust. Sonic Youth's Goo and British act Ikara Colt's Chat and Business, for example. The latter of the two is the debut from a London act that sounds taut and steely jawed, a rigid arrangement of damaged art punk clawing its way around wiry rhythms. The tension in the songs is a goddamn tightrope that the quartet fearlessly rushes down. The vocal styles range from a chorus of commanding shouts to a more condensed burn, where keyboardist Paul Resende embodies Thurston Moore splitting personalities with Richard Hell's dark side. Chat is an album in constant turmoil, where rumbling bass lines hit bottom in moments of stark minimalism one moment and then detonate into mushroom clouds of white noise the next. This excellent record is the sneering soundtrack to anonymous urban sexuality--discordant mood swings and blackened melodies adding to the new breed of punk experimentation, where the kinks lie in the cold depths of calculated detachment. (JENNIFER MAERZ)
stylus
The fact that Epitaph decided to go out on a limb and pick up this band is really quite admirable. Chat and Business sounds nothing like the bands on the label’s roster, giving it a touch of punk from kids who met in art school instead of a skate park or a hardcore show.
Originally released on Fantastic Plastic in the UK, Chat and Business is now seeing its well deserved North American release. It’s hard to believe that this record is even out considering the band only started playing seriously last year. Within a year, they recorded a demo, released two singles and an album. And you thought The Strokes were magicians.
Ikara Colt are part of a new rock revolution. But not the one you’re thinking of. They are part of a British scene with no name, along with noisesters like The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster, The Parkinsons and The Beatings, channelling legends like the Fall, Sonic Youth and Pixies. Frankly, this group is even more exciting than Sweden, New York and Detroit. No, seriously.
Chat and Business is a melange of stripped-down noise led by sharp guitars, socially conscious lyrics and a lot of attitude. It has some extremely raw production, giving it a wonderful tinny quality to it. Most of the time this approach sounds like shit, but producer Loucas Antoniades has captured the band’s tough, biting sound and not tampered with it much. The energy the band packs into their songs is unbelievable. Jon Ball thumps away on his bass at a manic pace, like he’s trying to out do the creative and blistering drumming of Dominic Young. The two alone can take your attention away from the enticing vocals of Paul Resende. Sounding like a cross between the blasé Thurston Moore and the ridiculous Mark E. Smith, Resende seems to keep his composure even when he screams.
The way “One Note” starts things off, with a series of convulsions on the drums and bass, is a brilliant way to get an album going. Since Ikara Colt doesn’t know when to quit, Chat and Business fails to contain a dull moment. “Sink Venice”, “Rudd”, “Pop Group” – they’re all beautiful rackets. And if you don’t give up on “Video Clip Show”, the final track, a hidden gem, “Escalate”, will show up, delivering the most brutal bundle of noise on the album. It’s well worth the patience. (Cam Lindsay)
sunday express
Here are some art-school student who enjoy shouting like the Sex Pistols. Punk was always a middle class game, but Ikara Colt have the manicbasslines and destructive guitar riffs required to back up the slurred ravings. Intelligent Brit anger channelled through all the spots where Brit award winners The Strokes settle for detached cool. ****
synthesis
Rock bands basically have two ways to get noticed by large audiences and find stardom: either do something just like everyone else only way better, or do something completely different and hope that people are smart enough to catch on. Hopefully, people are smart enough to catch on to Ikara Colt because they're doing something completely different; they're making indie punk rock that considers itself enough to find a neoteric approach to the execution of the music. Rather than predictable rhythms, whiney vocals and cookie-cutter guitar riffage, this British quartet employs enough songwriting and recognizable rock backbone to add construct and cohesion, then mixes in liberal doses of cacophonous guitar clash, flat-out sonic charges, neck-jerking changes and passages of breakdown and restructure that make Chat and Business an exciting and refreshing release, and a new personal favorite.
- Max Sidmanle rock backbone to add construct and cohesion, then mixes in liberal doses of cacophonous guitar clash, flat-out sonic charges, neck-jerking changes and passages of breakdown and restructure that make Chat and Business an exciting and refreshing release, and a new personal favorite. (Max Sidman)
tasty
When Steven Wells said in the NME recently that he thought Ikara Colt were a great mod band he, for once, might have had something. It just depends on how you define mod band of course. They sound nothing like the Small Faces or the Jam of course, but if he means that they steal graciously from the last 25 years of pop music, the he might be right.
‘Chat and Business’ is as good a debut album as you’ll hear this year I suppose, and yet within in it’s set of dense, atonal angular songs you can hear parts of the some of the great art-rock bands of the last two decades...including Joy Division, Sonic Youth, The Fall and maybe even a little Huggy Bear.
Of course Ikara do it all very well, bravely kicking off with explosive single ‘One Note’ and thrashing through stand out tracks such as ‘City of Glass’, ‘Sink Venice’ and the Brix-era Fall rip-off that is the excellent ‘At the Lodge’.
I can’t fault a band who love The Fall, Huggy Bear and Joy Division so much, that their influences show through so vividly on ‘Chat and Business’ is, I believe, a good thing...I mean it might just turn the corner for young guitar bands in this country. Meanwhile, this’ll do nicely
time out new york
Ikara Colt have caused a stir in England for bluntly declaring that all boring bands should be taken out and shot. In interviews, the four London art-school dropouts rail against over-the-hill, careerist rockers, limp nu-metal, commercial punk and anything else they perceive to be a threat to the spirit of rock & roll. This passionate stance - complemented by a frantic, minimalist, guitar-heavy racket - has drawn droves of idealistic young Brits to Ikara Colt since the release of the band's first single, "Sink Venice" last year.
Chat and Business, the group's debut album, doesn't reject absolutely everything that has come before, however. After hearing only the first few seconds of the opener, "One Note" (which employs approximately two notes), it's safe to assume that Ikara Colt are acquainted with the Fall's catalog and have lent a keen ear to early Sonic Youth. Driven by supercute songwriter and guitarist Claire Ingram's jitery frework, Paul Resende's shouty staccato vocals and a pile-driving rhythm section, Ikara Colt play bleached-out art-punk like a bunch of Ritalin fiends, focusing with manic intensity on repetitive chords and urgent, itchy rhythms. They clearly value speed over skill and disharmonious noise over melody but, thankfully, haven't entirely forgotten the tunes. The boy-girl call-and-response of "Belgravia" and the vertiginous angles of the feverishly catchy "Sink Venice" are insistently danceable and even approacth the simple grace of classic powerpop.
Live, Ikara Colt have been known to collapse into an instrument-crashing meltdown and invite audience members onstage to dance along until someone pulls the plug. Amid the chaos, however, there's geninely exciting rock & roll that lives up to the band's sworn refusal of mediocrity. Ikara Colt formed in 1999, and its members vowed to split up within five years, in order to spare fans a messy decline and keep themselves from becoming something they hate. Catch them while you can. (April Long)
xfm
From the compact thrash of ‘One Note’ and ‘Rudd’ to the closing ‘Video Clip Show’ it’s clear that the London-based guitar bashers are the latest successors in a respectable lineage of noiseniks; witness the hectoring tones and primitive rhythms of mid-80s Fall and, especially on the excellent ‘At the Lodge’, the spirit of Joy Division. Basically, it’s a more visceral take on the same post-punk influences as The Strokes and, as such, shows that some Brits still know how it’s done. NP
youbored.com
Punk is real. It has no political boundaries, even for a bunch of snotty art-school punks from England. IKARA COLT—an intense rock assault, complete with reckless-guitar noise, mad bass-lines, and chaotic drum slamming will show you the universal truth in real music. But because IKARA COLT have yet to set foot on American soil, all we get is their invigorating debut, “Chat and Business.”
Released to the U.S. on Epitaph in November 2002, this album reintroduces us to a kind of brutal rock, a rock that is raw and fast and furious. But no other band in recent memory can do it like IKARA COLT. Their hard, sharp sound is done louder and faster. This intelligent racket leaves you with no choice but to believe in the revolution again.
IKARA COLT frontman, Paul Resende, calls punk rock a style that is done. But as an attitude, it is timeless. And so why are these four musicians practicing a dead religion? Because in the midst of mindless aggression and screeching vocals, IKARA COLT brings you something that has been sorely missed in music today. “…We've got belief. At certain times, that's all we've got, but that's enough,” adds Resende.
To make this act believable, Resende (vocals) is joined by Dominic Young (drums) and Claire Ingram (guitar) and Jon Ball (bass). When they get together they are all members of a spontaneous jam session that, in moments of raw intensity, show pure truth. That was the key element to real punk rock—it was belief. Real punk values heart and soul above ability. And we, as listeners and patrons of the music industry, have to ask ourselves if this truth is really enough. (Miah Duncan)
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