If a download single is released and you don't need to pay money to acquire it, does it make an impact? Sod trees falling in forests - these are the soul-searching questions on which a radical new 21st century philosophy will be founded. However, the foundations of new schools of thought are outside my brief, and will thus be left untouched for now in favour of analysing noise.

In this instance the noise in question comes courtesy of Worcester's finest electro-pop shambolists, And What Will Be Left Of Them?. I don't know what the event is which begs the question of Their continued existence; I don't even know whether said cataclysm has happened yet. But from the evidence at hand, what there currently is of Them consists of fuzzy hi-octane pop-electroscuzz which makes up in energy and worthy sentiment what it lacks in slick production values. There's a little bit of Bis in the high-pitched wheeze of keys and the dual boy-girl vocals which sometimes shout, sometimes harmonise and sometimes shout in harmony. The whoo-ooo-ooos are pushed as far down the road to silliness as they can be without crossing the border into the world of the joke; the melancholy's too bouncy to really feel sad, although it occasionally scrapes poignancy; they reference Pulp; they sing of fleeting fame and the love of rock'n'roll; they're full of promise and possessed of the kind of energy which implies the drive to make good on it. These are good signs. And although this doesn't quite feel fully realised enough to leapfrog into Greatness, it does at the very least jumpnewt into the land of Future Lo-Fi Cult Heroes.

You can download these two songs for free from here. Hurrah!