Jitter Visions –  Cup (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

It’s very easy to throw comparisons around when reviewing bands, in his case make that one-man-bands, such as Cup, but as the short, sharp, opening sonic salvo of Runny Rummy hammers its way into your consciousness, all monotonous, industrial guitar riff and blunt trauma melody, you realise that none of the usual touchstones will really do. You hear fleeting suggestions of what Tym Wojcik’s record collection might contain and who his musical heroes could be, you hear the Pixies uncompromising weight, Pavement slabs of post-punkery and Dinosaur Jr’s blasted melodies but where others might plunder or plagiarise, he merely tips his hat, Cup is all about reference rather than repetition.

Jitter Visions even updates his own sound, previously happy to build his songs through simple punk aligned musical ethics, here, and used to great effect on songs like Eye See, analogue synthesiser is thrown into the mix creating odd and wonky backgrounds that somehow wander easily between whimsical and childlike one moment, and dark and menacing the next.

Songs like Cosmic Brain takes angular indie into even more off-kilter territory, Time Attack! is a white-noise, jagged edged slice of strangeness, Magic Planet is a sonic re-imagining of what New Wave could have been about and the title track is as odd and disjointed, restless and claustrophobic as anything you have ever heard.

As always Cup presents something new yet not new, oddly familiar and often just plain odd. It re-examines everything from punk to psychedelia to (very) alternative-rock, it takes in the fun and the frantic, the brilliant and the bizarre. As always with this wonderfully oddball artist, it is all about taking tried and tested sonic building blocks, the same ones that people have used for the last 40 years or more, and putting together in new and challenging ways to build a sonic monument to doing things your own way. And why the hell not?