SLEAFORD MODS 黑胶唱片和CD

Review: Festival favourites and working-class heroes Sleaford Mods hail from the East Midlands and have become the voice of the oppressed and the pissed off. Their gritty, lo-fi, raw and stripped-back music is powered by punky electronic beats and overlaid with bars spat out with real anger and ire. They have churned out plenty of it by now, subtle tweaking the template each time but never losing the visceral appeal. This new album UK Grim - a play on UK Grime? - is more dancefloor focussed than before it with the angst and pitfalls of modern life all addressed. It's another winner, no doubt.

Review: Sleaford Mods have long dealt in biting, angry and frustrated social commentary. Right now, they're not short on inspirations, and it's this that makes 'UK Grim' such a terrific album. Throughout, mic man Jason Williamson takes aims at the ills of the UK and the increasingly dark, nasty rhetoric of the Conservative government that he so clearly detests. Combine these inspired vocal diatribes (shout-along hooks included) with backing tracks that don't shy away from making things heavy, paranoid and intense - think warped, weighty basslines, lo-fi drum machine rhythms and fuzzy, scuzzy, post-punk guitars - and you have one of the Nottingham duo's most hard-hitting and breathlessly brilliant albums to date... and that's saying something.

Review: Considering it was only last year when Sleaford Mods dropped their prized UK Top 10 LP 'Eton Alive' it's almost jarring they should now unveil a Best Of, of sorts. It's hardly time to reflect when you're one of the most vital acts in contemporary British pop. But then the record stands up on its own merit, too, more than living up to the name by offering an insight into the ties - or rather tracks - that bind together the outfit's seven year career to date. Those familiar with the work of Jason Williamson and Andrew Fearn will not be surprised to learn the contents here are visceral, heartfelt, stubborn, angry, and stood with tongue firmly in cheek. Observations from an island still riddled with inequality and led by donkeys, set to the kind of catchy but raw guitar, sequencer and drum work that can't help but take you for a ride.

Review: Unabashed satirical wares straight outta Nottingham, Sleaford Mods somewhat charming embrace of British provincialism sees the semi-ironic nature of their music nestle itself in a space shared with Jamie T, Mike Skinner and Blackout Crew. Slightly wayward, political and patronising, their music can sometimes come off something like a scene out of Peep Show, though however tongue-in-cheek their commentary of the UK life can be, it's a gloriously proud album of cultural identity, and in among references to chip tune, bedroom produced beats, alternative Madchester-era sounds to rap and spoken word, it's a record embracing hoodies and trainers as much as it does anarchy and builder's tea. Oi!

Review: Perhaps unexpectedly for some given they're a band comprising a furious and profane man and another drinking lager whist staring at his laptop, Sleaford Mods have proved themselves on outfit ready to take on the world. Moreover, 'English Tapas', their fourth record to date, proves that they're only growing in stature and vitality with each record, but proving themselves a band who transcend genres as effortlessly as they summon up a particularly timely and unique brand of fierce invective. Place 'em on a lineage involving John Cooper Clarke, The Fall and The Streets if you like, but 'English Tapas' is very much of the now and possessed of a gritty intensity that is all this duo's own.

Review: Hailed by some as an invigorating two-finger gesture directed at the blandness and homegeneity of the modern music world, yet castigated by others as a mindlessly yobbish throwback, Sleaford Mods have divided opinion like few bands of recent memory. Yet 'Key Markets' would seem to form the point at which they truly leave the stereotypes of yore behind and make their mark as a gritty and vital force; punk rock in spirit yet informed here by krautrock groove, electronic music and hip-hop, and dominated by the incandescent ire of vocalist Jason Williamson, this is a dazzling monument of modern misanthropy, a triumphant and paradoxically life-affirming statement of disenfranchised rage.