Blog Post
Tapper and Bridge
Iain McArthur • 19 August 2021
Tapper & Bridge EP
You’ve got to love a story with a happy ending. Once upon a time, there was a band from Hampshire called Java that nearly made it. They blagged a few decent London support gigs and got some publicity from Kerrang with singer, Rosella Santoro, featuring in the ‘Ladykillers’ section alongside Lisa Dominique and others, and they even got a track on the ‘Powercuts’ compilation. They did record an album called ‘Change of Heart’ but by now it was the congested scene of 1987 with a lot of truly great albums coming out, and theirs was never released.
Happily, 30 years later in 2017, drummer Darran Bridge retrieved a copy of the demo from Rosella’s attic and he managed to get it spruced up and released on CD via Escape Music. They even started working on some new songs but it all fell apart again, although you can still get the original CD at a very reasonable price online.
Darran had recruited a guitarist named Lee Tapper to work on that new music and the two of them have now finally managed to turn some of those songs into a ‘teaser’ EP which you can listen to on Spotify and You Tube among others. There are four songs in total and you can tell they are still rooted in a post-NWOBHM melodic groove and it instantly takes you right back to the hairspray and spandex era of bands like Shy and Tobruk. The pick of the bunch might be the mid-paced ballad “Never Let You Down” with its lovely guitar solo or it could be the energetic riffing and soloing of “You Keep Me Hanging” – both very catchy numbers. There’s also a shimmering ballad “That’s All I Can Be” and the intriguing “You Take Me Higher”. Hopefully there’s a full album to follow and it would be great if they got some label support to beef it up.
You can have a listen for yourself on You Tube here;