Lo Fi by name, but certainly not by nature, Swedes Lo-Fi-Fnk are all flashing lights, day-glo rave flavours and seriously annoying stop-start keyboard blips and sequencers. Buddies Leo Drougge and August Hellsing formed the band at school in 2001, “trying their hand at what could only be described as instrumental soft house disguised as Bruce Springsteen,” according to their publicity. I wonder what the Boss would have to say about that – Boylife, their debut LP, is about as far from Thunder Road as Fatboy Slim is from Neil Young. And I don’t know about you, but to these ears, that’s pretty far.

The lads are bursting with energy and a swag of revived sound samples last heard somewhere in a Docklands warehouse in the 90s. They were obviously giving Armand Van Helden’s back catalogue a good workout and imbibing far too much red cordial when they came up with this garish debut – it plays like a continuous aural strobe light. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot more to it.

To be fair, some moments of Prince-like funk and nasal Pet Shop Boys vocal stylings (albeit with a thick Swedish inflection) occasionally emerge before they are crash tackled by the army of busy, programmed beats. In the less noisy moments it is even possible to trace a lineage from Boylife back to the infectious early days of ‘Madchester’ in the early 90s when pop first met hard dance in the shape of bands like the Beloved and the Shamen. But perhaps a little less of the frustratingly random beats and blips and more of the melody of those bands would have made this CD bearable.

The band have been likened to a ‘happy Cut Copy’, but Cut Copy’s innovative, layered electronic music makes Lo-Fi-Fnk seem like overexcited toddlers. The big floor-packing single ‘Change Channel’ will definitely appeal to young and crazy shape-pullers who can accommodate an assault of multiple, competing, asymmetrical beats, synth blasts and schoolground chant vocals, but for the most part I felt like a rabbit trapped in front of one of those enormous semi-trailers festooned with marker lights. There are far better things coming out of Sweden right now.

Susanna Nelson