CLECKHUDDERSFAX is a slang term that lumps together a triangle of West Yorkshire - points comprising of Cleckheaton, Huddersfield and Halifax - into near mythical status. Cleckhuddersfax is also a musical outfit spawned from this conurbation worship.

Starting out in the better half of the last decade, Cleckhuddersfax have more strings to their bow than most bands - the four piece scramble through genres like a lightning hit on a record shop. Broadly speaking their music is soaked in new wave bounce, pools of progressive slop and middle eastern arcs, all driven onwards by the insistent pulse of glam punk forgotten.

This isn't an ironic charity box haul of pride though, it's about making something new and exceptional from the bones of an unwanted past.

'SPEN BECK'

The Numismatist

UTR044 | CD / LP | 9 tracks, 31 mins | November 2010 | Buy

'Spen Beck' is a marathon sprinted. Eight songs in thirty minutes that cover an enthusiastic amount of ground. Opening with "Four Principles of Public Speaking", the album leaps for life among the tumbling rhythms, racing keyboard and robust bass lines.

"Stellar's Sea Cow" swells with harmonious vocals, oscillator wobble and glitter shuffle relentlessness, drawing on themes of fate and extinction to put its point across. A similar persistent stomp is felt through the album's glorious epic "Untitles" in which Lawrence sings "This ravine is only four feet long but you know that it's a drop that you can't comprehend, you're going to land on your body!". We all end in archaeology and risks are there to be taken.

Whether it's the death defying wonked-out guitar solo in "A Decree" or the morse code stammer of "New Durzi", this album finds inspiration in the abandonment of reason, in the ruins of "North Tripoli", in its interpretation of the present when it's passed into the past.

It's fitting then that 'Spen Beck' closes with the "National Anthem of Cleckhuddersfax" - taking us back to West Yorkshire via Lebanon, its spirit of adventure undiminished by the weight of reflection. With this album Cleckhudderfax have written their names in the prehistoric slime of our origins and what they do next only tomorrow will unearth.