It’s less than a year since we saw Toy for the first time, as surprise last-minute post-Faust additions to the early bit of the Quietus Village Mentality Stage at Field Day 2011. Since then, this group have come on remarkably strongly, with highlights including a support slot at the London Roundhouse where they won over the crowd with rather excellent panache and a run of limited edition vinyl singles that sold like the proverbial hot cakes. Now, the band have announced details of their debut album, a self-titled affair that’ll come out on Heavenly Recordings on September 10th, 2012. Given Heavenly’s long-standing love of both energetic British dance music and hazy, psychedelic pastoral, the label makes for a perfect home.
Toy was recorded in South London by Dan Carey (Hot Chip, Chairlift, The Kills), with many of the tracks being laid down in single takes, live in the studio. It’s a bold affair too, made up of 12 tracks and clocking in at an hour in length and including only one previously released piece of music, recent single ‘Motoring’. Current Quietus favourite track is ‘Dead & Gone’, which sits at track three, is seven minutes long, and perfects that great dance music-influenced gear shift that Toy do so well. Euphoric in a dawn-over-the-estuary sort of way, it basically screams "please remix me". ‘Strange’, meanwhile, has a growling, building menace and fiery denouement, while of the two instrumentals ‘Omni’ is a music box tease on a day that’s gone wrong and ‘Drifting Deeper’ is a troll-like beast. It finishes with ‘Kopter’, an excitable ten-minuter that does a 33 motorik record at 45rpm. There’s be a new single from Toy out very soon, in the meantime you can catch them at one of the (very many) tour and festival dates below, artwork at the foot:
JULY
4th – Proud Gallery, London
14th – Latitude Festival, Southwold
17th – White Heat @ Madam Jo Jo’s, London
21st – Port Eliot Festival, St. Germans
22nd – Sheffield, Tramlines Festival
28th – Kendal Calling Festival, Kendal
AUGUST
4th – Standon Calling
5th – Stockton Weekender
17th – Green Man festival
24th – Leeds Festival
26th – Reading Festival
SEPTEMBER
1st – End of the Road Festival
9th – Bestival
