Durrty Goodz - "The Youngers"

A dense piece, this. Swinging on vines through the halls of a haunted house, a young gang of kids are the protectors and destroyers of a certain code of conduct. A complicated hierarchy of seniority, catalogued first by age then success then bad-ass-ness then assets then physical strength then proficiency with weapons and vehicles then just plain looks. Snogging and shagging on kitchen floors and bathroom walls, every painting with moving eyes being a secret passage to one of their bedrooms, tallscreen tvs and videoblades aplenty, weird shoes that you can wear like gloves or like helmets if you need them. Plans of attack and sabotage are cockily put into freestyles that are performed nightly at the Salad Bowl Stage, thirty stories under the basement floor. Parents have long given up the idea of trying to get their kids back from this place, despite the weaker members in their weaker moments wishing beyond hope that they would. [Buy in the UK]

O.W.L. - "Be Alive"

O.W.L. are making something like what I can only think to describe as "elvin emo". Most of the tracks on the eponymously unabbreviated album Of Wondrous Legends are about things like Crimson Knights and the angel Gabriel and The Midnight Carnival, so this is the only one talking to the listener. And since the setting of the album is already heavily wooded and sun-dappled and cinched in leather with leather laces, this normally missable Yes b-side soundalike becomes for me a lovely strolling meander through the imaginary land of fantasy psychology. What does the advice "be alive" mean to a troll, to a guardbird, to a centaur prince? [Buy]

[photo source]