Album Review

Paper Tiger – Laptop Suntan

• 28th Oct 2013

Paper Tiger are the Gremlins that are hiding under your bed, stealing bags of Space Invaders from the kitchen and beating your high score on Tetris, playing the GameBoy in secret that you haven’t been able to lay your hands on recently.

That is the mischievous nature that is played out by the hard-to-pin-down hip-hop/electro outfit hailing from Wolverhampton, embracing an old skool stylistic nature and pairing it with more experimental offerings, often calling to mind memories of 80’s culture and 8bit video games.

Laptop Sunshine is a fine example of gloriously restless chill-out music, stuttering beats and bleeps nestle alongside blissful soundscapes that refuse to let it relax, with a vast range of influences pulled together in a magpie manner to fashion an irresistible downtempo kaleidoscope of sounds.

Amongst the erratic instrumentals there are also a number of guest vocalists, maintaining a cohesive balance with a fine selection of artists alongside them, Paper Tiger have crafted a fresh sounding and original release that bypasses indulgent trippy electronic noodling by using vocals as a hook to catch your attention, adding an additional layer to the already intriguing productions with a number of MCs that hark back in style to the UK’s formerly prevalent garage scene.

Laptop Sunshine is an album that should belong to the street, but instead it belongs to the domain of the bedroom producer, it belongs to the retrospective throwback internet age, with Paper Tiger putting a modern twist on backpack hip-hop and sending it back to us via high speed fibre optic connections.

Venue: Laptop Suntan
Support Band: Wah Wah 45s