Breton: Other Peoples' Problems – review

Breton position themselves not so much as band, but as a multimedia arts collective spawned by squat culture. They make films, remixes and music of their own, all from their own BretonLABS base in south London. Their debut album sounds pretty much exactly what you'd expect given their provenance: samples are cut and chopped, the bass judders with the insistence of dub, the vocals are drawled, electronically treated and incomprehensible, and the faint fug of weed paranoia hangs over it all. The blessing and curse for Breton is that they have one undeniably great song – a blessing in that it's one more than most groups have, a curse in that it makes everything else on Other Peoples' Problems feel like an only partially successful attempt to bottle its electricity. As long as Edward the Confessor is playing, you feel Breton are capable of anything. It's propelled by what appear to be steel drums, though they offer no comfort, sounding more like sirens and alarms than carnival. If Breton can relocate the inspiration that produced it, they'll be here for the long run.