AUSTERITY Records of Brighton have announced the second release in their cute C60 Club – for all you lovers of the chromium oxide – and that accolade falls to the trippy Balearic pop bliss of RADIDAS.
We took a look at the debut club release, Hanya’s Sea Shoes, here: orange cassette, four tracks with a sticker; lovingly curated, insanely limited, completely desirable. Yep, of course it’s sold out.
Garry Saunders and Jamie Windless, the two gents behind the Austerity moniker, take up the tale: “RADIDAS have been on our radar for a while now and it’s great to finally be able to work with Connor and Joe.”
Hailing from Kent but now resident among the thriving Brighton alt scene, the two-piece are the blissful flip to the duo terror that AK/DK are capable of. They’ve got chilled groove, infectious, sunshine melodies, sophisticated funk-informed psych atmospheres. It’s music for warm sundowns and evening star-shapes on the beach.
The band has its roots in Maidstone, where Connor and Joe began experimenting with synths, samples and loops; they released their debut EP, Dream Button, in July 2016 and appeared alongside Austerity Records’ Winter Gardens on a limited 8” – that’s no typo, yes, an 8” – last year.
They’ve shared a stage in the South East with Wolf Alice, Lets Eat Grandma, Bat for Lashes and STATS.
The cassette is this time moulded in pink, with sticker and slipcase; all in line with Garry and Jamie’s love of the resurgent format: “The look and feel, the analogue warmth of the sound, making mixtapes – these were all big factors in those formative years of our music fandom.”
You get a four-track bang for your buck. Press play, get those spools whirring and you have the bright, cool pop of “Daisy Chain”, all vocal hooks, swaying percussion, burbling sequencers and caressed guitars. “Do It” is a tough electrofunk vocal groove, with knowing nods to the mid-80s in those downpitched Fairlight voice samples.
“Shockwave” spills out into the smoky psych wooziness of Tame Impala, one for eyes wide at a candlelit all-back-to-mine; the quartet concludes with the deeper and trippier psych styles of “Miles Per Yeah”, all massive icy washes, a John Taylor-style bassline, partly submerged guitar licks, a hallucinatory vibe.
Your ghetto blaster crying out for some new choons? You know what to do. Pre-orders are being taken by Austerity as we speak, here; you can also follow RADIDAS on Facebook, Instagram and in the Twittersphere.
