Have an obsessive time listening to Primal Scream’s second best album ‘XTRMNTR’, chop up a breakbeat sample you found on youtube, improvise some vocals over the top in a single take, and, according to LA quartet Ballet, you can write a song in 15 minutes, just like that.
Buoyant and brimming with optimistic life, ‘New Ecstasy’, like many of Ballet’s releases to date, channels the psychedelic looseness of a pre-britpop 90s (think Sylvie’s Head here) and the sharp-edged electro punk thrills of Suicide. Fashionable as heck, but not sparing on the fun, the fact that they’ve been seen on multiple bills with west coast party goers like Dance Arts Centre or Gelli Haha may or may not hint at the sunniness of their disposition.
Not that there’s much information out there save the couple of paragraphs they kindly emailed us. Going from the indie experimentations of an excellent EP released last September via American Death Records, their stark and stylish monochromes artworks aping Les Rallizes Dénudés, and an instagram grid that tells me basically nothing save the fact I want to hang out with them, Ballet have the feel of a band with a deep visual and musical world lying in wait – one that will, hopefully, become slowly and tantalisingly unveiled in the months and years to come.
For anyone who insists on wearing sunglasses even when there isn’t any sun, and who’d rather light another cigarette than eat a proper meal (been there), make Ballet your most exciting new music discovery this summer.
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