CHOPS are a wild, damaged-dance band, who leapt from the cauldron of Leeds' ever-evolving DIY musical stew and hit the ground running in 2007, hellbent on perfecting their spontaneous combustion of jazzoid excess and lock-popping party bombs.

Richard 'Moz' Morris, Dominic Clare and Leon Carey married up their love of fidgety drum patterns, effect-drenched saxophone and synthesizer showdowns in such a way that every broken sound that swelled forth was caked in euphoria and creeped-out gravity.

After amassing multiple PA-systems into their live set-up, the band embarked on a series of ear-bleeding shows across the country, allowing their improvised chaos to solidify into the unpredictable genre-warping curiousities that they recorded for their debut release.

'SPLIT' W / HELSTEN

Ospylac Emit

UTR013 | 12" | 9 tracks, 40 mins | Aug 2008

Chops don't so much make music as radiate it. Their sound is playful, often making unprejudiced leaps in harmony, sometimes defying logic in their conscious pursuit of the futile and incoherent in an attempt to echo our modern everyday.

However that doesn't mean the 8 tracks captured on this debut LP - a split with haunted howl ensemble Helhesten - are random nonsense. Far from it, bold songs emerge from tumbling rhythmic soups, pulsing with life and purpose before they are sucked into another portal.

"Ospylac Emit" stammers and hops out into a bright new world, getting rowdy before grabbing a moment of reflection. "Ill Eagle" is a fierce, propulsive track crammed with sonic misadventure and brain-smacking ambience whilst an almost relaxed apprehension pervades "Loose Talk".