Bad Toys

I posted Matt Gunn’s Learning Through Loops, a track from his album Mostly Fiction, a week ago, last Monday. Coincidentally, the following Friday Matt released a new EP called Bad Toys, containing two new tracks Sun Mobil and Wonky Tonka. Both are jammed full of those lovely, feel good, uptempo, summer sounds, the sort of songs you like to imagine you might hear in the hour before sunset at Glastonbury, not on the main stage but somewhere further afield, one of the stages/ tents at the fringes of the festival. Again, not necessarily coincidentally, quite a few people I know are heading to Somerset today or already there. 

Sun Mobil rides in with a bounce, an urgent drum sample and repeating synth part, the bassline thumping in after thirty seconds. There are long waves of synth chords and a choppy rhythm guitar followed by a lovely, sunlit lead guitar. A squiggly acid topline enters and starts to do its work. Then there's a piano breakdown at four minutes, sending everything higher followed by a vocal, lines about chasing the warmth of summer, ‘Come on and find the sunshine/ Come on and find the sun’. It repeats and then everything crashes back in- drums, bass, guitar, synths, joined by a long, keening melody line.

Wonky Tonka is even giddier, a buzzing synth part, sirens, bumping rhythm and vocal sample, A funked up guitar part moves to the foreground and then the whole thing switches, percussion and drum breaks and a fully wigged out distorted synth sound, rising and falling. The way Matt keeps switching between the different sections has a bit of an old school hip hop vibe, the DJ cutting back and forth between the breakdown from two different records to keep the party going, the decks and speakers powered by electricity from the street lights. On it goes, the funky guitar riff cutting in and out and the twitchy synth part twisting itself round and round. Get Bad Toys here.