Fast Silver - TOY

I've spoken previously about how my first ever gig was also my favourite. It was to see The Horrors perform on their tour of the album Skying, an album which remains a favourite of mine. The gig was special for a number of reasons. It was pretty far from my house in the countryside and we needed to travel on the train to the big city and back again that same night - something of a thrill when you're 17 years old. I went with a friend of mine who had probably taken pity on me for whining about wanting to go to this gig and being without anyone to go with. She'd be the first to say that The Horror's blend of shoegaze and psychedelic rock had no place on her ipod playlists alongside Tinie Tempah and Girls Aloud so I remain so grateful to her for coming with me. She might have been regretting her decision as the gig started with the psychedelic noise rock of the support act; Bo Ningen. We spent a lot of time debating which of the band members were men and which were women. It turns out they're all men but the lead singer's scream and long hair had us fooled. The venue was a tiny student's union so there was no escape from the reverb and the crashing drums and all that screaming. It was noisy, it was raw and it was a bit much for us at the time. 

The second support act to come out was a little more what I was expecting. Skinny white dudes with hair in their eyes seemed to fit my expectations of a Horrors gig. TOY were an unknown band who played dark rumbling psychedelia with krautrock drumming surging it forward. They were great and the perfect warm-up to The Horrors who were fantastic, especially in such a tight venue. Still my favourite gig.

Since then I have seen Bo Ningen again doing a Dada poetry reading with the all female (actual women this time) punk band, Savages. Once again it was pretty intense, one for another time I think. I haven't managed to see TOY again but I have watched and listened to them grow in popularity to become quite the hot ticket themselves. TOY are now getting ready a third album after a cracking debut and a second album that may have passed me by slightly, not grabbing me for some reason. Fast Silver is the lead single from the album, Clear Shot, which is due out on October 28th. It's a dark wall of calculated noise, punctuated only by the whisping vocals and stabbing keys. For the full 6:19 the track seems like it wants to build to something before it scuttles back from whence it came. The keys remind me of a cheap horror thriller from the '70s and are the perfect soundtrack for a Nosferatu type figure to creep along to. Fast Silver seems anything but fast and its predominant colour is crepuscular black if anything but it's enough to keep me on my guard for what else might come lurking out of Clear Shot come October. 

TOY
Fast Silver
Heavenly
Vinyl and CD out: 28/10/2016 at Record Store