Shin Jin Rui's debut album 'Zutiqua' is available NOW through Ex Libris records. It costs £6 + p&p from the Ex Libris Records store. It is also available from Beatdown, RPM and Alt Vinyl in Newcastle and online from Amazon and CD baby. Yeah, and digitally on itunes. We are having a gig on May 2nd at the Side Cinema, Newcastle, to celebrate the album. A 'Zutiqua party', if you will.
Order ZutiquaGo to http://rooftopphilosophy.blogspot.com for more words by the man who wrote the following.....
Having long ago established themselves as the most compelling fixture of Newcastle’s underground circuit, Shin Jin Rui finally drop ‘Zutiqua’. It’s a move that ought to bring us all one step closer to curing the headcold British garage rawk has been groaning and spluttering through in recent years.
Proof that digging deep will always reward you with a chunk of gold for your shit-covered hands, ‘Zutiqua’ is a rusting, steam-powered automaton of an album, Franken-built with the exhumed parts of every slacker that ever mattered- Malkmus, Westerberg, Richman…They’re all to be found in the thick of Rui’s sweet rawk soup.
In the Pavement style meander of ‘Hollywood Listen!’ and the Lou Reed meets Bunnymen cult classic in waiting ‘Use Your Youth’, to the Replacements and Minutemen nods to be found in ‘Pre Slaughter Trial’ and ‘Foreign Cars’ they join the dots between the best of lo-fi’s now crusty heroes, and offer each a shot in the arm.
Other times the Rui sound like nothing else, like when ‘Eternity Is Loaded’ sees it’s spooked arpeggios suddenly crushed to death by a single, towering, monolithic riff. One with such primitive ferocity it sounds as though it were imported direct from a Cro-Magnon age of rocking out to the smack of bone against skull.
Full of saltily poetic tales of confusion and alienation, this is the sound of quarter-life inertia made good. The Dissillusionment of those too ‘backwards’ or bored to keep up with an ever-more acrobatic world of band-wagon hopping, harnessed, and waved like a home-made zip gun at the misery society wants you feeling the minute the first wrinkle appears.
Instead, Shin Jin Rui offer a hypodermic injection of virulent eccentricity to immunise you against today’s ever-more maddening world. A cure for garage rock’s epidemic of retro-posturing and terminal chic-ification. Listen to Zutiqua and you hear a tomahawk splat the eyeball of every glib sycophant pandering to this bullshit industry of insular, fretting cool. The first stone is cast, you’re only worry now is whether or not this record is heard enough. I hereby allow you to guiltlessly bathe your arse in this sweet rawk plentitude. Enjoy.
Reviews for Zutiqua
www.unpeeled.net/whitelabel.html
Something very much like The Sex Pistols rattling through a late sixties san-fran. So, hippie slouch batters punk strut and the gaps are filled with note perfect sixties pass-offs. It's a perfect 21st century rock record. Steals from, sneers at and outdoes everyone. Wit, style, muscle, cruelty and love,
Kerrang magazine
When they really push the pedal to the floor, they have the ability to impressively recreate the fuzzed-up brilliance of Bleach-era Nirvana at their most primitive, peppered with a more avante-garde flavour.
The crack magazine
...the sound of The Fall and Pavement being eaten alive by a zombie Ian Curtis while Lou Reed laughs from the sidelines.
Babysue
After spinning this album several times we still can't come up with any obvious bands whose music may have influenced these guys. Sixteen effective rockers here . Good powerful stuff...! (Rating: 4++++
www.glasswerk.co.uk
Shocking the nervous system into a battle of disjointed mellow punk whilst wrestling with the kung fu master of crusty grunge
FOR MORE SONGS GO TO WWW.SHINJINRUI.CO.UK
The Roadside Attraction EP is available from www.fakeindielabel.co.uk: