Artist of the Day: Starfucker

I think it's good that, as a man with a record collection growing by about a dozen new releases a week, I own at least one album that I can put on at a friend's house and both of us can enjoy. For a while, Reptilians by Starfucker filled this role perfectly: with plenty of catchy, danceable melodies for him and vocals droning about accepting death for me. It's a little bit of a confusing mixture, I'm inclined inform you, but it accumulated into this kind of brilliantly morbid celebration of our own mortality; as exciting as it was humbling. As a result, it ended 2011 very close to the top of my best-of list, which was incredibly surprising for an album that wasn't insufferably self-indulgent.

While there's been no word of a 2012 release - the group are currently on tour, I believe - Record Store Day did bring the unexpected opportunity to grab Heaven's Youth, a collection of Reptilians demos, which gives us   an interesting first-take on the tone of what would become such a fun-loving album. The first listen will make it pretty obvious that it's a few shades more depressing than the finished product: as tracks progress in a much more down-tempo, drab fashion and the vocals whisper almost whimsically before they inevitably drift off into the bass guitar and synths behind them. In comparison it's deeply sad, upsetting and almost entirely soul-destroying, so I'd fully recommend you go and find a copy if you were a fan of the original.

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