Cassette Kids - We Are

Sun 12th Oct, 2008 in Music Reviews

I’ve had a thing for the Cassette Kids ever since I saw them battling it out in the Garage to V finals at Oxford Arts over a year ago. The stage presence of this band, especially electric front lady Katrina Noorbergen, is completely phenomenal. If Bloc Party had eight guitarists and a female singer, you might be close. But then you’d discount how Noorbergen, the svelte blonde with a penchant for op-shop threads, is made for the stage.

In any case, Cassette Kids are just as satisfying on record as they are live. Tracks like Forwards Backwards are guaranteed to hang around your head, with the offbeat but oh-so-addictive vocals and insistent bass fashioning great dance music.

Like their former touring partners The Presets, Cassette Kids take the frivolity of indie-electro music and put a darker spin on it, resulting in a much more interesting cocktail of influences than your average – œThe’ band from the UK. There’s some serious glam coming through in the drumming production and the dreamy echoes of Acrobat are a standout. It all comes down to the fact that Katrina’s voice, whether on stage or on wax, is highly nuanced and expressive. Hopefully their stint with Sony won’t dampen this band’s creative visions.