The Sticks are a stripped down garage party band from Brighton. They are but two in number. They bash drums, claw at guitar - often swapping over instruments between songs live - and yelp with melodic abandon and delight. The Sticks were recently dubbed as 'semi-amateur', this may be true.

Barely knowing a guitar chord between them, they bang out their own curious musical arrangements. With cheap, unreliable equipment they manage to tease out a cacophony of crashing drums and raucous guitar melodies. The key elements of the duo's sound are undoubtedly drawn from the rudimentary ideas found in the more inept efforts of mid-sixties teen bands such as The Chimney Sweeps and The Keggs, as well as their modern day equivalents The Black Lips, The Coachwhips or The Hospitals, say.

The Stick's debut release proper is this split 10" with their friends Hands On Heads. It's a meeting of messed up minds that documents a shared surpise at the expressive freedom pop music can yield, when it's adventurous and playful, and creating it's own thinking party sound.

The spooked lyricism and frantic spontaneity of Hands on Heads' music perfectly complements the heartfelt gooey blues of The Sticks, which leaks from the brake cables of this clattering runaway train of a record. These are two bands writing their own future in their awkward, instinctual yet ever-involving compositions, and that daring bridge of kinship is the rationale for them to share these two sides of wax.

The split is released on green and red dipped vinyl, limited to 500 copies only, and housed within a hand-screened sleeve.