Nectar is Red – tunnelmental experimental assembly (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

You never really know what you are going to get from the tunnelmental crew but you know that the music, the visuals and the lyrics are always going to give you something to think about. And that after all is what it is all about. You might not always fully understand what it is that they are trying to tell you, their message may be oddly vague or vaguely odd, but it will conjure something new in your mind. And even if it is thoughts and ideas  that are at tangents to their own message…the main thing is that you are thinking about something new, looking at the world differently or just trying to unpick their riddlesome rhythms, sudoku sonics and cryptic lyrical play that they use as their building blocks.

There seems to be the familiar narrative about individualism, of doing your own thing, being confident in your non-conformity that wanders through their whole creative ethic but beyond that you are free to lift your own interpretations and draw your own (il-) logical conclusions. Musically Nectar is Red rides on a minimalist, post-punking vibe, one that reminds us of that late 80’s moment of realisation when certain peacock-punks dispensed with their battered guitars and turned broken keyboards and various new technologies to their New Romantic and Bowie-infused will. It is both musically nostalgic and brilliantly cutting edge!

Tunnelmental could just offer up alt-pop tunes for the mainstream market, but the fact that they prefer to deliver ideas that are more like a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, makes everything much more fun.