The universe of Badtime is a strange place indeed. A black and white swirling mash of junk, switchblades and broken bottles mulched together in a frenzy of raw scribbled doodles, whereby the entangled backstreets and alleys knotted together in a maddening labyrinth is populated by skulking, grinning demon felines plucked from a nightmarish Fleischer animation, complete with cartoon gloves and surreal elasticity typical of the silent era. One look in their eyes reveals a dagger or upside-down crucifix. Sometimes a house on fire. Always smirking with menace…

Quite whether Badtime’s ghoulish scrawls are inspired by their music or their debut tape Badtime Vol. 1 serving as a soundtrack to their eerie depictions isn’t entirely clear. An art project from The Netherlands comprising musician Kevin Schuit and conceptual artist Ioana Ciora, their freaky conjurings has seen the world of Badtime printed on highly sought after t-shirts and exhibited at the Baracca gallery in The Hague. Recruiting Lifeless Past’s Maurice Abath for extra guitar and vocal duties, Badtime belch forth a brittle and skulking trip of lo-fi synthpunk that scores their dark imaginings with expert, evocative disquiet.

“I cease to exist if I stop now”, a line lifted from the eponymous first track speaks to the EP’s haunted, nervous urgency. Muffled basslines and prowling snares strut with listless grooves that entice you into their abstract world with hollow, spectral motorik beats. The creeping trip takes a detour toward fetid synthpop on the taut ‘Crawler’, lyrical yearnings for the enveloping shadows wrought from city lights given futurist charge with pulsing drum machines and glossy sequencers, when the swaggering pace lulls to a languid menace on the cavernous murk of ‘Bunker’, sluggish guitars lick and squeal amid the echoing expanse. Finale ‘Crash and Burn’ end the bad dream on a high of classic electro-soaked garage rock, recalling the fizzy corrosion of art-punk acts like The Screamers or Futurisk.

In just eleven odd minutes, the mordant grit that pervades the EP never feels grey and repetitive, each track imbued with a distinct piquancy that rots with character. Truly delivering a ‘world’, Badtime Vol. 1 is an infectious document of street art that exists in perfect tandem with its lo-fi punk edge, four tracks that cut tersely yet still offer a universe to get lost in.