203989500-1There’s a thin line, when dealing with 8-bit glitch kitsch, between fun and irritating. Only you can decide what side of that line this EP falls on. Team Rocket deal in a brand of primary coloured mayhem that you hear on your holliers in Santa Ponza, months before your mates back home do. This time it’s the turn of Portstewart to send the Spanish students back with something. And it’s something alright. Quite what that something is…we don’t know.

The band have been on the go since 2011, first releasing ‘Watch It Glow’ followed by the ‘Summer Singles’ collection the ensuing year. They released a single on every Friday of that summer, two of which have been ressurected on this EP. The first fifteen seconds of ‘Living The Dream’ are a fun-filled synth party; after this it’s as if someone has given Elmo a few Skittles suppositories and let him loose on a Casio. This may well be aimed at pre-pubescent girls, though, and the lyrics would certainly suggest so, in which case it’s ruddy fantastic.

Breakout breaks out in standard-setting style – “I can take you away from here/ To where the lights are all shining down/ And all your friends are here/ Just take my hand and trust me/ we’ll break out.” Here’s the deal… he’s gonna take her away but it’s all good ‘cos all her friends are there and they’re like only going to hold hands anyway ‘n’ stuff. Is that a stylophone? LTD is a raging anthem, as things go, providing a shout-along title-line section that sugared-up small people and drunken bigger ones who should know better can air-punch along to. Altogether now…”L-T-D, L-T-D, L-T, Woooooh!”

Next up is Homerun. Okay now we’re talking, this is one for the aerobics class – “I’ll never give up on you” Get those heart-rates up! “No we’ll never lose this fight” Work those abs! “Kick off the procrastination” Lift those knees! “But work through the night” This is music to run up steps to. “They say youth is wasted upon the young”, so this rallying cry will knock some sense into you. Above The Clouds closes the EP and the aspirational, inspirational couplets come thick and fast – “Let’s spend our futures building a ladder to the clouds”– get this to less cynical ears immediately.

It’s hard to know who this EP is aimed at, or indeed if it’s a work of paint-by-numbers dayglo electro-pop, or one of pure genius. If it’s your thing, you’ll know within seconds, and that’s all there is to it. Everything sounds pretty much the same – the upside of this is that if you have one favourite, you have four. And that’s the real genius of this collection. Okay, I need a lie down.