Instrumental bands have surged in popularity during recent years, and it’s always a pleasure to see a band who still find a way to bring something completely new to the table. Megacone have managed to do this, and then some, with their ‘Fondle Fantasy EP’. Being such a young stage of a band’s life, Megacone have the opportunity to experiment and the EP comprises of four tracks that shouldn’t really work together but somehow manage to.

Beginning with gentle delay-laden guitar and growing into a belter, The Accidental is exactly what you want in an opening track. Similarities can be drawn to And So I Watch You From Afar, especially in the drumming of Nimi Blake. It’s upbeat, it’s contagious and manages to meld intricate guitars with a seriously thunderous rhythm section seamlessly. The intentional guitar screeches are sometimes remnant of something from the metal genre, but it all comes together really nicely to create a unique sound. The closing minute and 30 seconds of the song are intense in all the right ways and build anticipation for just what is going to come next.

The excellently titled Ouncy Castle is a song that delivers feel-good vibes and makes you want to bounce around. That may sound like an odd statement, but the harmonising guitars coupled with the bouncy-bassline combine together nicely and provide a song that is bursting with fun. For the majority it comes across as a calm song with dreamy guitars, but then it kicks into blistering guitar work with an oddly trad feel to it for the final thirty seconds to round off … an interesting song.

Aliens: Unsealed From The Future (What If?) is, as you’d expect from the title, a spacey track. It opens with an explosion of noise, that feels like it’s simulating a chase scene. This builds a strange sort of tension that leaves the listener antsy for the next section. The final minute of the song sounds like a cover of a song you might have heard on the soundtrack of a game for Super Nintendo with it’s fast paced video-game feel.

The EP closes with Astatine, a dreamy track that goes back to the safer sound of The Accidental rather than bringing yet more experimentation to the fray. It’s a solid track, but it feels a bit plain after the intensity that was built during Aliens. It creates a post rock style soundscape that again showcases the versatility of Megacone, and their ability to change styles between songs.

For a debut EP, ‘Fondle Fantasy’ is exactly what you want. It shows off the many different sides of the band, from fast paced rhythm led songs to calmer, more ambient tracks. It could be argued that the songs could have gelled better and flowed into each other more smoothly but let’s not dwell on that. Luckily for Megacone, the four songs being shown off are good enough to make technicalities like the flow of the EP irrelevant. Megacone are a young, exciting band that seem to be willing to challenge the boundaries of instrumental music and bring their own fresh feel to it.