Plastic Toys

“I’m thinking big. I want to play two hour sets in the world’s biggest stadiums, I want to take over where my heroes have left off, I want big life-size Plastic Toys dolls that you can fuck, so I can have sex with myself” Meet Jon, self-confessed ‘control freak’, band dictator and one-time roadie for Status Quo, Human League and a very demanding David Essex. (We’ll say no more, but it involved several rolls of strong white gaffer tape). Meet also Transformer-tattooed danger-freak guitarist Si, who “developed a taste for being electrocuted” during his time as a bowling machine mechanic: (“I’ve nearly killed myself three times, been crushed by machinery, fallen off stage, and split my head open.”) Say hi to mysterious ex-glam rocker and erstwhile Darkness support (don’t ask) Kitty on bass. Finally, let us introduce you to Agoraphobic Nosebleed obsessive, drum teacher, and dread-headed maniac Ben. This is Plastic Toys, a Southampton phenomenon that perfect hard-hitting electro rock with stadium-bound choruses. And with such an unusual cast of players, it’s no wonder they exist far from the realm of the conventional. Take everything you know about normal bands, and these four subvert it: Gigs? Chaos reigns, from plummeting down dry ski slopes on dog shit bins with Sikth, to unplanned psychedelic jams at sunrise complete with politic rants from audience members that continue until the power’s turned off (as at the recent Rootsville festival in Birmingham). A Plastic Toys gig boils your spinal fluid with visceral thrills while throwing sing-along choruses at you from all angles. Interests? Fishing and fucking. Influences? Grindcore, U2 and Van Halen – all at once. Weirdly though, this fucked up mix of music can be picked out of every Plastic Toys tune, although their closest reference point (and the one they all agree on) is Nine Inch Nails. NIN’s producer John Fryer even helped produce their early material. Their work with the legendary knob-twiddler was to attract the attention of the Dreamcatcher label who picked up an earlier incarnation of the band, Karmic Jera, after they won Kerrang’s international Battle Of The Bands competition in 2000 and released an album. “They knew nothing though” says Jon “we were a White Zombie-esque band, so they made us do photoshoots in graveyards like we were Cradle Of Filth or something. We recorded an album we hated, all the kids preferred our self-produced demo and we lost our hardcore fanbase.” The band fell apart. Now Plastic Toys, the four turned their noses up at countless deals, and decided to go it alone, funded by a mysterious ‘financial backer’. They set up their own label, ‘Hill Valley Records’ which is named after the town from ‘Back To The Future’ – Jon’s favourite film. Recording in his bedroom, Jon forged almost all of debut ‘For Tonight Only’ alone, spurning producers to keep it exactly how he wanted it. Andy Gray (Gary Numan / U2) heard their stuff and asked to mix a track (new single and industro-pop anthem-to-be ‘Let Me Feel The Love’). “We let him, but we kept an eye on him. We’re control freaks” Jon admits. The track rocketed straight to the top of the One Music listeners chart and is now spreading across US radio like syphilis. The rest of the album is an intravenous shot into the corpse of electro-rock, a relentless collision of seemingly disparate noise and pop hooks. Take the opening salvo for example, as the plinky plonk piano intro of ‘Curtain Up’ collides with headfuck confessions of “Last night I fucked your girlfriend” on ‘Devil’’s evil racket. Or ‘Tonight Only’ which sees diseased synths locking horns with scuzz guitars as stadium drums creep in through the backdoor. It’s a dark peaen to debauchery that lyrically epitomises Plastic Toys’ manifesto: “It’s about getting wasted, going out and picking up a girl and being so completely brutally honest that people don’t believe you,” Jon admits, “taken to the extreme you could have sex with someone by saying ‘I’m going to use you’. They think you’re joking and love you anyway, but you don’t”. Nice. However, he shows a more sensitive side with the meltdown despair of ‘I Miss You’ and ‘Goodbye’’s robotic finale. “‘Goodbye’ deals with perfect love – and that when you die you know you haven’t been a perfect arsehole” Jon explains. This dichotomy pierces the heart of Plastic Toys – they’re uncompromising rage shot through with pop sensibilities (how many other industrial-rock groups do you see covering Peggy Lee’s ‘Fever’?), evil and sensitive simultaneously, insular obsessives with one common goal. “I want to live my life like a fucking messiah” Jon screams relentlessly as ‘Tonight Only’ prolapses into silence, awaiting the devoted faithful. We doubt they’ll be long.