"I can tell by your sound that you do it because it's in right now." Nico Reviews Jenny Sparks and 300Skullsandcounting

300SkullsAndCounting and Jenny Sparks want to incinerate London venues and assault hipster sensibilities. It seems that the only thing they revile more than trendy music is boring music- that is if the two aren’t synonymous. And not being trendy, or worse, boring is a game that they are particularly good at; their gambit being a carnivalesque genre collision that is the exact intersection of the 300skulls' chip-tune screamer and Jenny Spark's bassline curator’s solo work and taste.

Perhaps what marks London’s current underground as the epicentre of new musical output is that its most eminent contributors share an ethos rather than an underlying sound; namely, the consensus that as an artist, you ought to give yourself total and utter permission to do whatever you want, no matter how outdated or uncool- bassline, screamo etc…The idea that anyone would even try to replicate this sound is hilarious, but not so unlikely at a time when x publication can say something about laptop twee and all of a sudden everyone is making music that sounds like belle and sebastian processed through a calculator. So 300 screams the sheep away; “kill you in the bace” narrates an altercation with kids at Ormside, “I can tеll by your sound that you do it 'cause it's in right now” sounds like a cry from the weird kids at school trying to scare away the popular kids. And “You can tell that I do it 'cause I'm out of touch” assumes a new meaning considering the duet's newfound virality. On paper, they’re bitingly out of step with today’s easily reiteratable, monocultural, musical fads; but 300 and Jenny suggest that if you scream loud enough, persevere, and dare to stick to your emo-and-bassline-loving guns well enough, the culture might drift towards you.

Both bassline and screamo originated as countercultures led by teens who didn’t have much else; kids who sought to turn the barest of sounds into sounding outrageous- pantomime-esque, artificial caricatures of EDM and hardcore respectively; and so the combination is doubly outrageous. The two sounds are antagonistic throughout, but what threads them together is 300 and Jenny’s seeming brotherhood. A bit like their ex’s, the femcels, the new album is packed with teases into their studio and real-life antics; 2 of the tracks being phone calls, placing ribeye orders, and the artists giving live comments on the music throughout. You can imitate chord progressions but you can’t imitate the zany synergy of the split-brain these two seem to share. Accidents and inside jokes seem to be the whole point of the collaboration; beyond anything, they’re making music for themselves, which is probably why everyone loves it.

“Use a fucking cymbal; to decapitate a hipster” is a gorey image that sums things up pretty well; splitting ears as much as emotion, 300SkullsAndCounting and Jenny Sparks’ music feels like an emblem of the unconformity and audacity that is required of artists to make music in London.