Debut double A-side single Leni / Science Of Sleep 7" white vinyl / digital package & ltd lettered cassette players & tapes

"I've been reading the papers / I've been dreaming of sailors /
Won't you send me some pictures / Pictures of your silver life?"

- Leni

The Walworth Road, a grey strip of bookmakers, fast food restaurants and dilapidated boozers that links Camberwell to Elephant and Castle, does not at first glance look like the sort of place that shelters a raft of secrets. But then, you can never really tell, can you? Just step off the main road, dart beneath that railway bridge and you'll find yourself stood on the doorstep of one of the most intriguing, dedicated, plain inspired young groups in Britain.

They're called Flash Fiktion, and they sound like - well, like what exactly? Twinkling psychedelia, pounding tropical rhythms, deranged glampunk stomps and sunny electro-pop - songs like Capsules Of Sun and Me And Mr E are broiling, multi-headed studio chimera that melt together totally diverse sounds and influences. Think past pop fusioneers like Late Of The Pier or Yeasayer. But also think songs that hold together without losing their form - not freaks of nature destined to wither and die outside the studio, but genetically engineered hybrids that scurry down your ear canals and make play around your synapses.

The band are Matt (vocals, guitar, keyboard, samplers), Ollie (vocals, guitar) and Dan (drums) - and the fact they've chosen to settle here, cooped up far from the bustling districts of London hipsterdom, says a lot about their collective ambition. "There's hundreds of really good bands out there but not many who want to make an impact on the mainstream," complains Matt. "Everyone's playing to their peers, and that's not going to change the big picture." So Flash Fiktion have their eye on the mainstream? "Yeah, but the mainstream right now is very corporate," he shoots back. "We're out to destroy what's going on in the mainstream. Music shouldn't have to be diluted to be popular".

If this sounds like the talk of dreamers, well, you're not altogether wrong. As Flash Fiktion toiled over their weird, wonderful songs, suddenly strange tales and glimpses of narrative flickered into life - fair(l)y stories that felt grounded in reality, but also somewhere else. "We're big fans of odd, plot-heavy films and we wanted the lyrics to have that sort of feel," adds Matt. "Realistic, but sort of unreal at the same time. Most people when they write stories in songs, it's all about real life - but we want to take you away from reality."

Flash Fiktion is a name that refers to a specific kind of short-form fiction that gelled neatly with the band's own approach to lyrics. "Flash fiction refers to a story written so it can be fitted on one sheet of paper, or on the back of a postcard," says Ollie. "It's not like a novel, drawn-out, something that thickens and develops. It's a narrative with a quick impact - an idea that you can communicate in a three minute song."

Maybe it's just being cooped up here in a room in south London, but Flash Fiktion spend a lot of time thinking about what separates them from the outside. "We do feel off on our own - both geographically and artistically," ponders Ollie. "We feel like separatists!" laughs Matt. In this case, though, isolation has bred inspiration. Stay tuned: this is a story that's only just beginning.

It's almost two years since Matt and Ollie started toiling in this studio, working daily on songs that are only now about to see the light of day. In this time, other musicians came and went but the sneaking feeling persisted that something, or someone, was missing. Cue a serendipitous meeting with Dan, a drummer new to London from Croatia, that closed the triangle. The three first met in the studio's kitchen, where they bonded over a love of cinema - satirical news flick Network, David Cronenburg's Videodrome, the work of the Coen Brothers. Then, when Matt and Ollie parted ways with their last drummer, Dan took to the stool - and stayed put.

Schooled in Latin and Afro-Cuban percussion, it's Dan's limber, fluid drumming that's a big part of why Flash Fiktion sound like such an original, uncategorisable proposition. "I grew up right by the Mediterranean, and the whole Latin music thing was a huge influence," says Dan. "People making dance music these days all record with studio tools like Logic, ProTools, and that takes all the life out of the music. Latin flavour isn't just about taking a track and putting some cowbells on it. Afro-Cuban music has been here for thousands of years, and it's the most danceable music on the planet. Listen to old punk music and you can hear the adrenaline, that sense of push and pull - that's the feel that we want."

Another inspiring meeting came when the band met Alex 'Lexxx' Dromgoole, the studio engineer who's recently mixed records for the likes of Wild Beasts and Crystal Castles. Matt says "We recorded and mixed Leni and Science of Sleep ourselves, and we wanted to put them straight out there. Then we were thinking hard about a producer for the album. We knew that it was all there if we could find a mixer who shared our ambition and was consumed by sound. Lexxx got it straight away, mixed a track for us called Capsules Of Sun, which sounded exactly like we imagined it should, so that was incredibly exciting, as we suddenly knew we had the whole record ready, and didn't need anyone else to mess with it."



So now, here's the first fruits of Flash Fiktion's studio seclusion. Released as a double A-side, 'Leni/Science Of Sleep' shows two very different sides of a band with many angles. 'Leni' is pounding, glam-Stooges prog-punk with a lyric that, as Matt puts it, is "kind of claustrophobic - it's a letter to this guy Leni who has an amazing life, but the writer is yearning to get free of some sort of confinement, he's stuck away". The woozy, eastern-tinged 'Science Of Sleep', meanwhile, is named after the Michel Gondry film of the same name. "It's about inventing language in your sleep. You know that idea of solipsism - the fact you think you're the only person who's real? I've always thought that since I was a kid, I'm the only real person and everyone else is there for my benefit. Not necessarily that I'm anything special, but the idea that if I can't feel what you can feel, are you actually real? We're putting the parts for each of the songs up on soundcloud so other musicians can invent their own versions of the tracks, and take some inspiration from our self inflicted confinement - make their own flash fiktions, let the music fly out there!"