Flash Fiktion

An unspectacular grey strip of bookmakers, fast food joints and run-down boozers in South London may not be the healthiest nor most salubrious place for three young men to congregate assiduously in a windowless room for the best part of two years. Indeed, under such circumstances imaginations may begin to run wildly out of sync with normality…. Step off the strip, dart beneath a dark railway bridge and amidst steel and red bricks you’re suddenly at the doorstep of where an intriguing young band harbour their psychedelic secrets. Here, in the seclusion of a hidden lock-up ‘Flash Fiktion’ have been holed up creating a surely-epic album. Matt (vocals, guitar, keyboard, samplers), Ollie (vocals, guitar) and Dan (drums, percussion) have seldom emerged but for the occasional live jaunt with the likes of The Bravery and tours with The Young Knives. Finally they’re done – and here’s their opus: “we gave ourselves no deadlines and allowed our peculiar minds to breathe, it was essential we spent time really sculpting it” says Matt of the gang’s lengthy genesis. Clocking in at a lean 38 minutes, this self-titled collection assembles eleven polished nuggets of mutant pop, glam-punk stomps, sunny electro-pop and peculiar hybrids that melt twinkling psychedelia into tropical rhythms. Not the sort of record you would expect to come from a humdrum South London patch, but then the songs themselves are about dreaming your way out of mundane surroundings. First single from the album ‘Capsules of Sun’ instantly found its way to national radio via its blog popularity. A favourite of DJ Nick Grimshaw, who declared on air “amazing stuff, you just don’t want it to end”. Similarly, the new single to coincide with the album release, ‘Me and Mr E’, has already been featured by Huw Stephens is a twisted tale of a man with a split personality who frequents a lap dancing club later devastated by fire. “Our songs are like little stories, based on real-life events but given a kind of psychedelic twist” explains Matt. “They’re like dreams or nightmares with no clear rules between reality and non-reality”.