Long Island's
Rahim (formerly
Radio Raheem) have released several singles' worth of retro-new wave, but on their first EP,
Jungles, they move into outright
Gang of Four worship. Each member of the band at one time or another blatantly cops something from his doppelgänger in the Leeds boys: on "One at a Time," drummer Philip Sutton flagrantly lifts Hugo Burnham's drum pattern from "Anthrax," and throughout the EP, Ryan McCoy's implacable basslines ground Michael Friedlich's wayward single-note guitar lines exactly as Dave Allen did for Andy Gill all through
Entertainment! Friedlich, unfortunately, is no Jon King, as either a singer or a theorist, so what the listener is left with here is four songs strongly reminiscent of A Brief History of the Twentieth Century, with lyrics and vocals strongly reminiscent of, well, nothing in particular. The re-formed
Gang of Four have already re-recorded all of their old hits, thereby rendering
Jungles redundant. ~ Stewart Mason