Various Artists: This is Peterborough

Rowdy Farrago Records tell us that they “have never taken the easy, commercial path” and so, as Peterborough’s foremost music evangelists, they have put together “a snapshot of Peterborough’s music scene in 2008″. Presumably the easy, commercial path would have been to send it out last year, when we were still in 2008, but who are we to quibble?

It is difficult to review a 19-track CD from genres as diverse as punk, screamo and new rave in so few words, and so I can only assume that Rowdy Farrago is a sham, a ruse from the Peterborough Tourist Board to attract me to visit the town myself.

They almost succeeded. Double Handsome Dragons grabbed my attention with their song ‘Flies and Eggs in his Lungs’. It wasn’t just the best song title in the world last year, but it’s also rather like some greasy-fingered sequencer monkey tinkering with Lostprophets, forcing seven different time signatures into any given track. I can hear it now, ghosting across the River Nene towards RAF Wittering. This, apparently, is Peterborough.

Pick: Atlantis, Arise! – ‘Tripping a Lie of Paradise’

Rating: 2 stars