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Vector Lovers CDR

Two seconds and one oval electronic pulse in and I'm a vector lover too. (Oh yes, there was always a Battlezone element to my taste in music.) Disco-Botnik puts it so much more succinctly than I ever could. It’s trance at disco speed with Kraftwerk sensibilities. Disco. And. Robotic. It’s transmitted on the leg frequency – the one that temporarily disengages the connections between brain and bottom half – and I look like I need my medication, rolling around on this chair propelled by flailing lower limbs. Thankfully there’s no-one else here to share this vision. Except you. www.iwari.com

The Lymes CDR

"The Lymes are from Norwich.. The Lymes had conceived the premise by which The Truman Show work by the age of Six.. They are inspired by both absent friends and the rock and roll ideal. Occasionally naïve and always destructive this ideal may be, it remains their only release." If I was The Lymes I’d take up masturbation. As a release it’s at least as satisfying as making a demo on which the best track, Nausea, is nothing like as good as Jane’s Addiction. Masturbation has the additional benefit, from my point of view, that The Lymes are unlikely send recordings of themselves doing it to r+eb, 133 Green End Rd, Cambridge, CB4 1RW. www.thelymes.com

Tom Young CDR

Unfortunately, if Tom sent any paperwork with his demo it’s long since vanished into The Void. Fortunately, if I was going to take the piss I would have no compunction about making something up on his behalf. Unfortunately, I’m not going to have the opportunity because, fortunately, Tom’s demo is pretty good. Three tracks of varied breakbeats that could slot in at the intelligent end of big beat or the faster end of trip hop and one anonymous techno time-waster going by the anonymous name of Another Day. Note to the Parlophone A&R department who seem to email everyone I praise in this column: when you get Tom’s demo, Another Day is the one you’ll want for the single. Big_chill_uk@hotmail.com

Ewawoowa Venetian Gold Merchant CDR

If you could earn the Demo of the Month prize on name alone, Ewawoowa would be a dead cert. (If there was a Demo of the Month prize.) If you could win the Drum Fetishist of the Year award on the basis of snare intensity, clarity and frequency, Ewawoowa would be a dead cert. (If there was a Drum Fetishist of the Year award.) If you could pick up an Oscar for Soundtrack Waiting For a Film on the back of the spookiest vocoder, the most intriguing melody and the crucialist beats this side of Daft Punk’s "unreleased and experimental" DAT archive, Ewawoowa would be a dead cert. (If there was etc etc.) There isn’t. So let’s just say this craps all over everything else you will hear on demo this month. (Except the Vector Lovers. And Karmadillo.) Andrew.G.Watson@btinternet.com

Triad, European Wildcat CDR

Other bands learn from this: Triad tried. Sending a photocopy of a page ostensibly from Careless Talk with a review of them on it was a slice of genius. Making the review a gushing stream of hyperlatives ("getting families of sperm whales grooving") was a touch of forgeronic class and circling it in red was the icing on the cake. They would’ve got away with too, if they hadn’t used a page with a review by me on it. If you want me to think you’ve been reviewed in our mag, choose a page I’m not likely to have looked at. (I’m so vain, you know I think this song is about me.) The title track is the one to go for here, a frazzled half-French acid trip played by a trio of long-haired psychedelic groovers riding a lava stream down the side of an ejaculating volcano at sunset on a planet far out in space and time. Comes in a sandpaper sleeve. Discovery Music, 7 Litchdon Street, Barnstaple, North Devon, EX31 8ND triadcom212@aol.com

Karmadillo When The Sun Comes Up CDR

Of course, he wasn’t called Karmadillo when I last knew him. Before he went to Guyana for two years he was just (plain) Rishi and he played in metal bands. Now he’s rishistar and he’s Karmadillo and he’s a charango-playing one-man-band and he’s written a clutch of songs and recorded them in an afternoon in Camberley. A charango? You know those tiny guitars with huge heads that all the Peruvian pan-pipe bands have? That’s a charango. It’s traditionally made out of an armadillo shell. It’s not traditionally used to accompany vulnerable lo-fi pop songs. But it should be. www.rishistar.net/karmadillo

The Warm Traumas, Incitement 2 Excitement CDR

"Big up 2 ya scene" are the text-literate greetings sent by The Warm Traumas. Barely literate, I say, but they’re certainly past masters of assonance. (For those of us with flat vowels, that is a gag.) And they’re not so bad at the spiky guitar thing either. Magnetophone is the kind of gorgeous noise that so many punks would give their third chord for. The other five tracks are breakneck jerkcore at the junction of post-rock and punk-rock. They incited, I’m excited. Big up 2 thr scene. www.geocities.com/thewarmtraumas.

Traci66 CDR

This is a good one: "Rock band Traci66 formed in the summer of 2001.. After forming, Traci66 started writing and rehearsing.." As opposed to most bands who form and then embark on a round the world water ski expedition with only Penguin biscuits for sustenance? For fuck’s sake. I mean, yes, these are bands sending a demo to a music magazine, not aspiring journos entering The Guardian Young Ponce of the Year, but if someone recorded a soundtrack for this column, I'd listen to it before sending it off. Have I given you a clue? For the record, Traci66 are a half-decent rock band in the autumn of 2002. After listening to Faith No More they listened to Jane’s Addiction. www.traci66.com

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