MySpace Trawl is our weekly feature where we attempt to offer you a band that we believe is doing something interesting and not knocking out the same stuff as everyone else so they can appear on the cover of the NME.

Like you, we once believed the NME was a bible for discovering new stuff that we'd then pretend we'd discovered ourselves. But sadly, the days of it being a credible magazine have now gone in our eyes. The amount of boring English indie music has reached saturation point. We may not be a music magazine, but we know what we like, and we know what utter bollocks sounds like. After ignoring all the messages in our inbox from bands saying we’ll like them, we finally came across a group that reminded us there is good stuff out there. This week's band is Tempo No Tempo. 

Tempo No Tempo are a seemingly mysterious presence in the world of music. Most of the time when we’ve featured an artist on the Trawl, we’ve been presented with a mini-biography telling us all about the band's history and what they're generally up to. We get none of this with Tempo No Tempo.

While Tempo No Tempo's MySpace page lists no band members or general actual info, we do believe this is the line up – Chris Cadena (vocals/keyboards), Alex Kaiser (drums), Tyler McCauley (vocals/guitar) and Jason Wexler (bass). But we applaud them for staying anonymous, intentionally or not. Fuck the introductions, we presume. Tempo No Tempo just want people to hear the music and aren’t too bothered about writing some fancy press release where they big themselves up and make themselves into something they're not. 

What we have discovered after donning our detective heads is that Tempo No Tempo have been stamping their mark on their local scene – they’ve recently been named one of the "twenty best bands in the San Francisco Bay Area" by a radio station we’ve never heard of called LIVE 105-KITS.  Tempo No Tempo have also charted on other stations we never knew existed, on KALX in Berkeley, California (#7 in October, fact fans) and KZSC (recently #6 on their weekly top 30). Other honourable spots of press include a mention on Pitchfork. Which is much better than the NME. And cheaper. And discusses The Kooks less.

What we are given on the Tempo No Tempo MySpace page is a varied list of influences which – before we listened to any of the four tracks available – made us wonder what we were in for, with a varied list of bands cited as influences including everyone’s favourite post rockers Mogwai, electronic guru, LCD Soundsystem and New York indie kids The Strokes. Hopefully, Tempo No Tempo won’t do what The Stokes have done and release three albums which gradually get worse and worse, though.

Combining post rock, electronics and indie may seem as likely as safely combining water and electricity, but we're happy to say that it's been successfully done. All these elements combine together to create a sound which we'd compare to The Killers. But much better. Opening track Static begins with a swirling and euphoric keyboard jam that gradually builds and builds before crashing in to fully-fledged guitar and drum-driven melody. It makes us wants to dance, it makes want to rock out with our fellow man and it makes us want to forget about all our troubles in the real world. Music has the power and ability to move people, and with Tempo No Tempo we believe we’ve found a band that is out to have fun and enjoy themselves. With the catchy chorus of “Nothings going to change”, we certainly hope this doesn’t apply to the band themselves. Hopefully change will happen and they will be propelled into the limelight. Then hopefully appear on radio and TV stations we’ve heard of. 

Just like The Attachments who we covered a few weeks ago, Tempo No Tempo also have an EP available for you to buy. For seven measly dollars – which works out to hardly anything – you can help support a band to maybe spread their music further then San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Two out of the four tracks on their MySpace page gives an idea of how the band can quickly change their dynamic sound. While Static was heavy on keyboard and other electronic effects, the second track that is also on the EP entitled A Different Weapon has more emphasis on the lyrically ability of the band. While a lot of musical tends to draw on the writer’s experiences from the past, to us the lyrics are simple and straightforward which everyone can relate to. Hecklerspray often struggles to follow most hip-hop songs as we don’t usually pop caps in peoples asses, gorge ourselves on champagne and don’t have the luck of finding pretty ladies shaking their tits at us randomly. All we have are potato guns, endless supplies of flat coke and people shaking their fingers at us when we annoy them. 

Tempo No Tempo are slowly raising their profile in America with the creative way they combine a seemingly impossible blend of musical genres together. With no seemingly target audience to aim for, they have the potential to take on many new followers who appreciate something intelligent and new. 

Read more: 

Tempo No Tempo MySpace Page