Formed in the winter of 2012, Belfast band Hit the B Button! have been described as psychedelic rock music for the 8-bit generation, and I’m inclined to agree. Coming together in a tiny apartment building, brothers Stuart and Mike Ledgerwood joined their friend Phil Wright to create something pretty special. Their debut EP Apartments is named after these humble beginnings and you can even hear the moment when this band first began on fourth track Sorry About This Steven.

From the opening bars of the first track Martial you can hear just what you’ve let yourself in for. A happy go lucky synth filled tune with Mario-esque bleeps and bloops that soon give way to chirpy guitars and Stuart’s perfectly suited vocal style. This is a versatile track that doesn’t really stick to any one genre, it’s got chip tune influences, rock influences, maybe even some psychedelic pop in there too, but either way it’s catchy as hell and we can’t stop listening.

Blue Potion is something different again, it’s slower, with funky guitars and smooth rolling drums. For a band that have only been around for a few years, this is an intelligent, grown up track that shows that this band can easily span the genres and aren’t afraid to try something different.

The Ganges initially seems to follow in Blue Potion’s footsteps at first, with almost a minute of atmospheric guitar at the beginning, but this soon gives way to a speedier tempo and some intricate guitar as they repeat “nothing but the funk” in a slightly 70s-esque bluesy rocky chorus. Towards the end of the track, things get a little more delicate before rocking up again.

The fourth track on this EP is Sorry About This Steven, featuring audio from that first ever practice, this is more pop punk than the rest with some very obvious Biffy Clyro influences. A softer track than the previous few, it suits Hit the B Button! to play this style of music.

Over all this is a very accomplished EP, and a very very interesting listen. Hit the B Button! are immensely talented at what they do, and they seem to do an awful lot! Personally, Martial is my favourite track from the EP and I was a little surprised that the other tracks were so very different from it, but I enjoyed Blue Potion and The Ganges equally as much and the talent is obviously there. Sorry About This Steven is my second favourite track as that happy-go-lucky sound could be heard again.

Hit the B Button!
Apartments has been entirely crafted by Hit the B Button! themselves- everything from the artwork and production to the recording and song writing is their own and it’s a fantastic first offering. Apartments is a masterclass in crossing the conventional musical genres and Hit the B Button! are definitely ones to watch out for. You can get Apartments here.

Laura Caldwell

Author: Laura Caldwell

Hi, I'm Laura. I'm 30 years old and have a degree in Journalism with Photo-Imaging at the University of Ulster. I have an undying love for Belfast and all that it has to offer, an undying love for sleeping, Tegan and Sara, trashy tv shows, foreign snack-foods and being irresponsible with money. I also quite like origami, reading, jazz, hip-hop, dubstep, anything acoustic and Food Network TV. I've written for The Big List, Culture NI, Chatterbox and The Echo, as well as writing for BBC Across the Line.

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