ANYONE FOR TENNIS?

Bat & Ball's sibling pairing hits the mark

 In this age of the bloody X-Factor and young people on a Saturday night murdering dull ballads on TV, it's refreshing to see people still going the organic route into music. One such new combo are Bat & Ball, based around brother and sister act Chris and Abi Sinclair from London, about to release their debut EP on Hospital Samples.
“When we were young and started writing music, we liked bands with a bit of history,” the siblings tell DJ Mag, “bands that you could really admire and aspire to be. The X-Factor seems insincere and doesn’t put the music first.” 


'We Prefer It In the Dark', the indie-tronic lead track from their EP, recalls the tender electronica of '90s trip-hop duo Lamb, while elegiac post-rock cut 'Tails' finds Chris joining Abi on vox for the sparse, dark pop track's chorus. Abi's voice slightly recalls Natalie Merchant from '80s alt.rockers 10,000 Maniacs, or a tweeting Bat For Lashes at a push. These guys have got a good rally going, and are in it for the long haul.

Chris started a band when he was 10, playing covers with his friends from school in the West Country, all under the supervision of their dad. Now that they've left home for the bright lights of the Big Smoke, they're writing together more prolifically. “We’ve always been influenced by electronic music in our writing. A lot of the time we like to write separately,” says Chris. “You could say we finish each other’s sentences in musical terms,” says Abi, doing just that.

Bat & Ball is clearly a metaphor for their sibling partnership — “although we also like alliteration”. They use samples of things like jangling keys and hand-claps, and mess around with a Roland synth handed down to them from the '80s. Once the skeleton of a song is written between the two of them, they flesh it out with their band — yet still retain that all-important space in-between. “The band help create everything that is beautiful and dynamic,” they say.