** Plastik** sound like they should have stylish haircuts. It’s the blend of indie cool vocals, hysteric subject matter, funky guitar lines, and pseudo techno keyboard bloops and blips. Lead track, Neon sounds like a cross between Coming Up era Sueda, Muse, and My Life Story. Not a bad collection of influences all told. Dead Star is less way out, sounding very much like the less commercially obvious end of britpop (60ft Dolls, Jocasta, etc) - classic verse/chorus structure with the guitars getting more excitable the closer the chorus gets before exploding in a rush of distortion. I should probably mention first album Mansun here as well. Honey employs blatant use of a drum machine to drive the general feel in a more New Order direction whilst Drive-In Movie Eyes is a swinging guitar ballad. If this was 1994 Plastic would already be signed, as it is they’re looking a good bet for when music fashion goes full circle within the next couple of years. And this is a good thing.

(see www.plastik.co.uk)