Two members of Lotus have been playing in bands together since they were 13 and it shows. They are solid, professional and polished. Though not overly exciting or innovative they are very pleasantly listenable to, soft and strong, a bit like Andrex, but not loo long. They list a wide range of influences from John Barry to Tennessee Williams (alphabetically speaking). Overall they're a nice blend of keyboards, regular drums, medium bass and a large shake of vocals, but with no free party hat.
The song titles alone win me over instantly. The first 'I Was Starving Hungry In Tescos' is an offbeat bouncy pop number complete with na na nas and background gurgly bits. '2 Little 2 Late'is similarly boppy, varying its rhythm and effortlessly lifting me up and taking me with it so I'm lost in the depths of its bouncy pop. It's only on the last track 'The Existential Pencils' that Mogul finally lose me. It starts like quite a cool rip off of an Amiga computer game sound track, but then develops into what sounds like a 3 minute pop song slowed down and stretched out and out till it's in agony. I don't know if it ever ends, but it certainly goes on a long time.
Nicely packaged in a shiny black, white and grey splurged sleeve, which is great apart from the fact that it only has two sides so the tape keeps falling out. The first track is solid pop rock with a funky twang, though lyrically monotonous and very repetitive: 'Do I have to face the world?' the singer demands endlessly. 'Yes, go on, stop repeating it, don't be such wimps!', you want to shout at them in the end. The tape definitely gets progressively better as you carry on listening to it. The second track is more dancey and the vocals are more tannoyed. The demo then gets even more dancey and slightly trancey , with odd spoken word bits, in quite a cool, prance along kind of way. You could imagine bits being used as background music to android antics in a Sc-fi movie. Quite good really. Even the lyrics get better, with the classic lines 'Standing face to face with a loaded gun, something tells me it's time to run'. Really?!
Not at all so, they're bold, brash and boppy. They sound energetic to the point of over-zealousness on the 'baaa-yeah!' that end the first track 'Stereo Sister'. It seems like they're trying too hard, the singer sounds breathless as if they're all in a 400m sprint and are desperate to get to the finishing line / end of song, whilst still trying to do their best along the way.
Harsh drum noises open and then leave me floundering and fumbling in my mind for words to descibe the musical style - somewhere between rock, rap and funk. Sort of. The inlay card provides a list of band members but not of song titles, thus, though the music is reasonable, I find it more entertaining to try and play guesss the song titles due to the slightly garbled lyrics. The first goes something like 'You are nothing without money', or possibly, 'You are nothing without mummy'; the second 'I'm hoping to proceed' or 'I'm upping to grow seed'. It's hard to tell really.