Details

For a long time if you wanted to hear the most exciting new band in Britain, you knocked on a tall black door off the Lambeth Road. An aging British Rail building - part art studio happening, part squat – Studio 180 was where south London’s Palma Violets were gestating, away from sunlight and the world at large. In an airless basement that could hold 50 people, the band would finally appear in a hail of feedback and organ noise, before blazing their way through a short, incredible set: their sound a primitive, wild rock’n’roll music offering echoes of ‘60s garage and soul but with a defiant Englishness at its core, the band themselves radiating a ferocious energy, encapsulated in the tense and tactile interplay between Chilli Jesson and Sam Fryer but driven forward by the incessant beat of Will Doyle’s drumming. A The London four-piece formed in 2011 and up until recently have had minimum online presence and no songs recorded, instead preferring for people to come and experience their raucous live shows at their Lambeth studio 180. The album is named after this building, which also features on the cover (above). ‘180’ was recorded in London at RAK Studios (produced by Pulp’s Steve Mackey), and also at The Lightship (produced by Rory Attwell).

1. Best of Friends

2. Step Up for the Cool Cats

3. All the Garden Birds

4. Rattlesnake Highway

5. Chicken Dippers

6. Last of the Summer Wine

7. Tom the Drum

8. Johnny Bagga' Donuts

9. We Found Love

10. Three Stars

11. 14