Birthday / Last Exit EP - Format: Vinyl - Stream Buy
Release Date: 2003 / 10 / 20
The first release on KIN, the first Junior Boys release.
+ Birthday - 4:15
+ Last Exit - 6:38
+ Unbirthday - 6:02
+ Last Exit (Fennesz Remix) - 5:33
"... an alchemic sound that, after only one EP, is both identifiable and unique."
8.5 / 10
Scott Plagenhoef - Pitchfork
"The lead track, 'Birthday', could be Phil Oakey passed several times through Luomo's gossamer filters: so fragile it might disintegrate yet bound by a song-led melody as tight as sinew".
Jockey Slut Magazine - Jockey Slut
"LAST EXIT - By some distance my favourite track (outside gutter-garridge) I've heard this year. In fact, it makes a good companion piece/contrast with the likes of Dizzy and Kano and Nasty Crew, it's like a whole other direction 2step could have gone: androgynous, fragile, exquisitely tender (the tremulous chorus whispers "I'll catch you if you fall"). 2step infused with the subtle melodic grace and glistening delicacy of Prefab Sprout or The Blue Nile. Yin to gutter's yang-overdose".
Simon Reynolds - blissblog
"Birthday is minimal moroder white-boy-soul-pop that flirts with garage, dallies with disco, then decides it's too darned vulnerable and irresistable for any genre-hassling and sashays off into it's peculiar Canadian world" 8.5 / 10
VICE electro Dept - VICE Magazine
"Somehow connecting the synth pop of the 80s to the 2-step and syncopated hip-hop of Timbaland today, the Junior Boys have fashioned an incredible debut that is suffused with the sort of assuredness of true innovators. With a template like the one that they have fashioned here, it's hard to see how this group can go wrong in the future".
Stylus Magazine - Stylus Magazine
"Junior Boys’ incredible "Birthday/Last Exit EP" (KIN) makes me want dance and prance and scream and shout and scribble and press repeat again and again.".
Chris Houghton - Careless Talk Costs Lives
Absorb EP of the Month
"it's a marriage that works well: songs are intelligent and lyric-driven, harnessing the whimsy of indie and pure teenage angst. if 'birthday' doesn't deserve to be played by a thousand teenagers in their bedrooms as they cry over their latest broken heart, then there is no justice in the world."
Elizabeth Wells - Absorb
"...I know why people are talking about it. Killer."
5/5.
Thaddi - De:bug"A little bit of something for everyone and extremely high quality all around".
Smallfish - Smallfish on-line
"Truly original... bloody great".
cmu update - CMU Online
"There's been a flurry of excitement surrounding the Junior Boys - one of those rare moments when the scene forgets about fashion or what it means to belong to one musical clique or another and, instead, brings everything together in a display of warmth, innovation and a love of remarkable tunes. The Junior Boys work around a notion that brims with simplicity, their love of vintage synthpop as produced by John Foxx and Visage offset by their immersion in the beats of Timbaland, Dre and the synth layers of Berlin's Basic Channel. Hard to imagine how the gulf between these influences can be bridged..and yet this record somehow manages to do exactly that. "Birthday" is, indeed, one of those hum-in-yo-head-till-you-die sort of tunes, but the euphoric nostalgia of the composition rests nervously on the sort of broken beat that most often comes straight out of West London. "Unbirthday", meanwhile, sees the sort of transformation that could only be equaled if Depeche Mode threw their synths out and jammed with King Tubby and Pole instead. It's a magnificently deep, spacious, electronic, evocative, mutilated beast of a tune that oozes depth and an understanding of music that just can't be faked. Cementing this diversity with another spot-on bit of selection, the EP ends with an intricate, painfully structured remix from Fennesz - building the track up from a mess of frozen beats and vocals into a re-configured wall of warm guitars and effervescent distant vocals that conjure up the thought of the Cocteau Twins produced by Kevin Shields at his peak. Really, quite an unbelievable record - something really special is happening here. Unmissable".
Boomkat - www.boomkat.com
"They owe something to electro, something to house/techno (especially the minimal variants thereof), something to Timbaland-style avant-R&B, and a lot to UK garage. (The Boys also do a fine line in ambient, downtempo tracks--and it's not often I say that.) But combined with those beats is a commitment to melodic songcraft that calls to mind the best (only the very best) of early 80s synth-pop".
Angus Gordon - I Feel Love
Number 1 in the zzub chart October 2003.
www.dmcworld.com/charts
