CYMBALS – The End (Tough Love)

London-via-Paris indietronica outfit CYMBALS take us on a continental sojourn during seven-minute magnum opus 'The End'. The foursome, assembled from the shrapnel of an array of LDN acts, have been gathering recognition as pioneers of shiny synth-pop that incorporates, as the PR spiel dictates, “turn-of-the-century French disco, Sheffield Steel City new romanticism and a kind of new wave freewheeling.” Following briskly on from lauded efforts 'Like An Animal' and 'The Natural World', this quartet has been setting both dance floors and minds alight with 'The End'.

With a host of nods to the Parisian disco vocalist Jack Cleverly grew up with, CYMBALS whisk through a breadth of styles. There's Metronomy-style indie house, Fenech-Soler synth bursts and the Northern indie of Everything Everything – it's a sonic salmagundi, but one that is much bigger than the sum of its parts. It's lit by flickering strobes and autumn-dappled neons, inciting revelry in dens of ecstasy and across makeshift house parties – wherever 'The End' is played, there'll be merriment.

The track, as stated by Cleverly, is “about the night and the night out, about being young, and being the only one, and, then, suddenly being older.” When the ditty has been explained, the length and genre-flippancy becomes clear - and far from being episodic, becomes more fluid. It's context-bound in that respect, but regardless, 'The End' is a summer belter that's surely been the OST for more than one 'night you don't remember but will never forget'. Bathe in the intoxicated beats, the nostalgic bass and vast canyons of synth mastery – in the immortal words of One Direction: “Tonight let's get some, and live while [you're] young.”