>Life is cyclical. Just as day follows night, high tide follows low tide and a spell in jail follows Pete Docherty’s latest proclamations of sobriety, after yesterday’s Tinnitus-induced/-replicating NOISE-fest from Kayaka, it was inevitable that Today’s New Band would be a less thrash-tastic affair all round. As my Public Enemy-based tinnitus fades slowly into the background and telephones become helpfully audible again, the choice of music that my throbbing ears can cope with is still severely limited.

However, choosing non-ear-threatening music is to wander through a minefield of awful sounds. Soft ‘n’ smooth jazz-moron Kenny G would be sonically inoffensive, yet could cause Death By Bland. So what is needed is a band that is exciting enough to be enjoyable but one that doesn’t utilise powertools as their main instruments.

Step forward Today’s New Band, Heartbeeps. Perhaps the best description for their sound would be ‘Not-Quite-Noise-Rock’ – there is a lovely drone-iness to their music, which is a happy marriage of super lo-fi and super-melodic. Glacial Valleys is probably their best song, clunkily lo-fi, vaguely Beta Band-ish, whilst Tramwajs is a symphony on toy instruments, nicely strained vocals and a male voice choir singing through paper cups. Heartbeeps sound homemade and unfocused, but in the very best kind of way, like a child’s telescope made out of toilet rolls.

Listen to their songs at their MySpace page here!