- When School Of Seven Bells first rocked around back in 2008, with their unusual (especially at that time) concoction of Shoegaze, dream-pop and synthrocking New Wave sounds, I was instantly addicted to the warm, euphoric highs, and the coldly tragic troughs. Alpinisms was, and is, an album I'm so thoroughly able to dive into at just about any point and experience immense amounts of pleasure.
For some strange reason I was just as easily able to end my obsession, never really connecting with another SVIIB record again, certainly not in that immediate and visceral manner in which I was initially engulfed by that wall of sound they bring. Even when there has been good reason to do so, as with this year's Ghostory, I've just been a bit unavailable for their gothy seductiveness.
An internet only – what is this – a tour ep? That's probably not the best time to try and reconnect with the School, but I gave it a go, anyway. Its title-track elbows in to first place, and who's going to get in the way of its enormousness? Nearly thirteen minutes of trademark shoegaze fuzz and speeding electro-pop, it sensually invites you to not only "Put your sad down", but also to "Just feel with your body". Still it comes across less as some sweaty grinder and more as a kind of dancercise soundtrack, before it dissolves mid-high-kick into a viscous, liquid soundscape which is...actually cooler than the rest of the song, before the electro-pop shimmers back in to pump its way to the finish.
Secret Days, the EP's single, slows down the beat (by SVIIB standards), a bass-heavy groove for a not particularly engaging coming-of-age, shedding of former woes and burdens story; I mean, we've done that a few times with this band, haven't we? Faded Hearts pushes the electro-pop element of the band's sound out into the spotlight, all on it's own. The overt cheesiness makes this sound ironically more appropriate as a release for Vagrant Records. Bouncy beats, pitch-shifted, chipmunk backing vox and a soppy love-song, gee guys I dunno...
A cover of 60s psych-synth experimental-rockers Silver Apples tune Lovefingers neatly folds its oddities into the SVIIB sound but has a slickness the original didn't and fails to be quite as interesting or eerie. Closer Painting A Memory again loses the shoegaze and gains a fairly middle of the road house beat (complete with handclaps), aiming for a hypnotically euphoric dance finish.
I've been thrilled with all the experiments in house and techno that've been popping up like mushrooms after a storm in the second half of 2012 and, in a way, it's nice to come across one that doesn't feel very successful, just to convince myself that I'm not experiencing some latent, flashback, rave psychosis. I'm equally sad that it had to come from the School Of Seven Bells, I've loved them in the past, but I just don't understand this.

- Chris Cobcroft.