Tip from the top (or from near the bottom given the way the day has gone). If you have to take apart a Japanese cassette deck from days gone by then get yourself a set of JIS screwdrivers for everything that looks like a Philips head screw is not and, given those little screws have had a lot of time to embed themselves solidly, it doesn’t take much to strip the head if you don’t use the right screwdriver. Anyway, I have to test the damn thing afterwards so once more my hand goes into the box of recently purchased antique music formats and pulls out this orange cassette in a clear box from a band called Thick Syrup that had been released on a Glasgow label called CUSP Records.
The music? In a word, great. Thick Syrup have a whole variety of retro moves to play and the they play them well. Bits of funk, retro eighties vocal stylisations and a whole bunch of cues more familiar to fans of seventies rock rattle around inside songs that make you feel like you are tripping on something that makes your feet involuntarily move. The curious thing about this collection of songs – and you get seven – is that they would actually sound familiar to the casual listener whilst the believers amongst us would recognise the fact that Thick Syrup are actually walking their own path.
The cassette is available from Bandcamp.