Their story starts with a peculiar 11 track collection recorded in Bergen, Norway, and released on April 4th, 2005, on the band’s very own & very recently established Young Aspiring Professionals aka YAP Records.
Its aesthetic takes in indie & shoegaze, new wave, punk, funk & crossover electronica, though it’s consistently hard to tell what’s programmed and what’s live. At times the production & songwriting sound polished & ambitious. Other moments are so lo-fi & tongue-in-cheek they’re basically juvenile antics worthy of art school or college humor…
Indie opener Bulldozer takes equal inspiration from The Velvet Undergound‘s Heroin & the Berserker-scene from Kevin Smith‘s Clerks in its heartfelt urge to convey a profound sentiment: “BMX is better than sex”. Nightflight to Uranus sounds like a straight-faced Samwell-take on Boney M gone too far. Ugly Primadonna gazes upon Spielberg’s Extra-Terrestrial in an absurdly disturbing – or disturbingly absurd – fashion. Maybelline lift slogans from the self-same cosmetics brand. Princess offers “a prince of an ass” and Sex Me Up a femme fatale who doesn’t wanna hug, and in Laurie the singer longs to be Lou Reed, but only so he can get close to Laurie Anderson.
The Most Beautiful Girl, on the other hand, represents a serious, sentimental love song, while Fa-Fa-Fa pays respectful homage to Talking Heads‘ Psycho Killer.
All in all, this insanity paved the way for a BMX-mounted band who referred to themselves as postmodern Renaissance men.
