Various – One Inch Badge Presents Sea Monsters: The Best of Brighton

Though they’ve since delivered records from the likes of Why? and Casiotone For the Painfully Alone, Brighton-based label One Inch Badge remain besotted with the hometown talent that first persuaded owner Alex Murray to set up shop. This eighteen-track compilation was released locally in January to mark their twentieth release – as good a milestone as any – and now the rest of the country gets to explore the fruits of OIB’s sound-scouting.

It’s not flawless, but such ‘state-of-the-scene’ overviews never are: dunce caps are reserved for Salter Cane, whose Sorrow is far too close to Nick Cave parody to deliver much enjoyment; and The Hornblower Brothers, whose existential ponderings are insufferably twee.

But they’re outnumbered by moments of excellence: Illness’s The Guardian gives steady time signatures the finger to produce awesome instrumental scuzz-rock with echoes of Cowtown; Cold Pumas are deliciously heavy and abrasive on Proof of Man; Nullifier and Soccer 96’s respective takes on 8-bit electro are confident introductions to two acts yet to acquire much of a profile beyond the BN postcode, but fully deserving of one; while Drum Eyes’ John Carpenter-esque Future Police, lifted from last year’s rather good Gira Gira, is no less darkly imaginative for its recycling.

The Squadron Leaders mark a final fine discovery, closing the compilation with nostalgia-inducing surf whammy bends and tropical saxophone, affirming the breadth of One Inch Badge’s cherry-picking. And with nary a whiff of Kook or a big-beat banger to be found, it seems London-by-the-sea’s in rude health.