My feet aren’t overly large or small. Average, I guess you’d say. But every time I find a pair of shoes I like, my size is always—always—gone. It’s always been that way.

As a consequence, I tend to settle for less alluring but readily available footwear, (God forbid I’d wait an entire week for new stock to arrive in-store). Hence, I concede to green shoes when I yearn for orange; yellow when I covet red; lurid, gummy PVC when I what I really want is velvety faux-suede.

The first time I witnessed raucous Glasgow electro bratz Bis I was sporting a pair of second-choice baseball shoes. They were pale blue; I had wanted brown: the lace/trim contrast was, frankly, a let down.

By the end of the show, however—during which the beer-puddled rubber-band floor slung us skyward as the raucous troika blazed a neon trail through toybox-electro and glaring digi-punk (embodied by the rabid grrl-canticle “Kandy Pop”)—Bis, (and the resultant muddy brown shoes thereof), had zealously pogo-ed their way into my heart. The stage became a fitting target for my now-loved footwear’s arrows and stars.

Bis’ ADD-addled cartoon pop triumvirate—archly circumscribed by Manda Rin, Sci-Fi Steven and John Disco—ceased trading, alas, in 2003, (having been the subject of several ‘best Scottish band’ polls and Japanese watches fashioned by Baby-G); and although they’ve embraced several impressive incarnations since, (the sassy-ass art-pop of The Kitchen; the unethical techno of Dirty Hospital), it’s their effusive, effervescent new collective, Data Panik, (an allusion to Pere Ubu in name alone), that’s assured to win us over.

Sure, they’ve only self-released one brown-parcelled seven-inch single thus far, but what promising tidings it brings: the synth-burling agit-pop opener “Sense Not Sense” sees edgy electro and jawboned guitars rampage languid vocals and rupturing drum shapes in a most engaging, remarkable manner.

The flipside meanwhile, “Cubis (I Love You),” is a boogie Moog Moroder workout, underpinned by razor riffs and the loudest boy-girl vocal spat since The Human League ransacked the B52’s “Love Shack.” And as for the towering stadium-prog breakdown: woah!

Bis were a must-have DIY enterprise: a hyperactive, Teen-C konsolation for shuffling indie and ill-coloured sneakers. Data Panik, on the other hand, fit like the snuggest, most durable, kitten-heeled, star adorned, winkle-picking roller-boots you never saw.

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