Found are off to play at SXSW at the moment (support them by buying this) and one of the gigs they’ll be playing there is the Hype Machine Radio launch party.  Hype Machine Radio heavily involves a friend of mine called Dev Sherlock from Blogfresh Radio, who has been about as supportive as humanly possible of  Toad Records, of the blog itself, and of pretty much all of the bands who I’ve sent his way.

Pairing up with the Hype Machine is great news for Dev, I assume, partly because Hype are becoming a pretty heavy hitters in the world of internet music and partly because they seem to be genuinely nice people.  He has also been kind enough to extend that warm, cosy cyber-hug to Found, both by inviting them to play and by including them, and my good self, on the Hype Radio show episode on this page, to go with the launch party event itself (abridged version on Blogfresh Daily).

All of this, in terms of exposure, is great news for Found, who have agreed to record a Toad Session on their return from SXSW.  In amongst all this excitement, however, they have slipped out an EP which is really rather good and has been really rather criminally overlooked, as far as I can tell.

Seven songs seems a bit long for an EP, but there are a couple of fairly short numbers – almost interludes – on there, and the whole thing clocks in at a very efficient twenty-two-and-a-bit minutes.  I have to confess that I really, really do not like Now We’ll Never Make the Playlist, but the rest of it is terrific.  The opener, Enough About Human Rights, is one of my favourite songs for ages.  The rest of the record jumps about a bit, but it’s still a very coherent piece of work.  There’s Let Fidelity Break, which could have been lifted straight from the This Mess We Keep Reshaping sessions, and the excellent, down-tempo Freaky Freaky Raving.  This Way By Design reminds be of their earlier work, actually, and its these little shifts of gear which make this an interesting EP, for me.

They don’t seem like they’ve quite decided on how they want to move beyond their previous album, and The Fidelities seems almost like they’re trying on a few things for size before they take the plunge into their next project*.  But, having said that, it’s still a beautifully packed and highly enjoyable piece of work in its own right.

Found – Enough About Human Rights

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*Disclaimer: I have no idea if this is true or not, of course.

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