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Sellotape

Spies In The Wires@Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh, Thu June 14 2007
4 stars

The whiff of freshly heated maize that accompanies Sellotape’s vocal version of Hot Butter’s 1972 electro-disco hit, Popcorn (the first ever totally synthesiser-based single to chart, pop-pickers), may take its subject matter literally, but it’s still a lot more subtle than Crazy Frog’s pummelling desecration of one of the catchiest ditties in pop history.

Fronted by uber-bobbed girl about town and PVC-panted mein hostess of the Girlelectro night at super student hang-out The Southern, Viki Sellotape, Sellotape the band do that Rough Trade circa 1978 Ladbroke Grove squat rock shamble. Making their live debut, they go hell for, um, leather with an energetic and unstudied bounce through the DIY post-punk messthetics handbook. Think Kleenex or the Delta Five, with an in-built ramshackleness tempered by a vocal style betraying a smidgen of Siouxsie Sioux.

It’s the contents of the popcorn making machine, though, which gives extra added flavour to a show that celebrates the joys of Blue Peter style sticky back plastic in terms of fixing, mending and barely keeping things together. It’s a philosophy Sellotape’s home made music is founded on.

www.mspace.com/vikisellotape

The List, issue 579, 3 July 2007

ends
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