Cassette
Conrad Pack's SELN Recordings takes a notable step sideways away from the club into more post-punk orientated, DIY territory for the debut release of south London's playfully named Cliche Toupee. And on the subject of that name... Given we're currently amidst the age of the Hair Transplant, I'm not entirely certain there's much cliched about a toupee in 2025, but such anachronisms do seem apposite for a set of recordings made between 2007-2015 that make significant nods towards both the monochromatic minimal wave and home recording boom of the early-to-mid 80s. Consider it a compliment when I say that this could quite easily be interpreted as a recently discovered relic of that halcyon era, so authentically gloomy and off-handedly convincing is the overall presentation. That the most recently recorded song here is already ten years old is a curiosity that gives great credit to SELN's encouraging of its creator to finally put these sounds out into the world. And a fair bit has happened in that time. 'Post-punk' has trumped 'lo-fi' to now essentially become the de facto term for describing what was mostly understood as 'indie', but what Cliche Toupee are doing here is a good deal more sophisticated than what the majority of the art school slum fetishists that congregate around the Windmill are up to. As far as contemporaries go, it's perhaps best to look towards Maidstone's INFOmatiON label and the output of both Sanctuary of Praise and the Living Rainbow, the latter sharing a fascination with TV-P that's born out in Cliche Toupee's covering of 'Three Wishes'. We've had to wait a fair while to hear Endlessly Continuous, though it seems to have arrived just in time. Now we just need more of it.
