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I just couldn’t resist ‘Toy Story’ being a child at heart I’d always romanced with the idea of the playthings assuming a life outside just merely being slaves and victims of an infant’s whim when the lights went out and he or she was fast asleep dreaming of sweets and superheroes. Steve Jeffries AKA Cathode you sense might be similarly obsessed, worried sick lying awake at night wondering whether those noises filtering from the kitchen belong to the toaster et al having a disco. Lock up your kitchen appliances is all I’ll venture unless you want a surprise waiting for you over breakfast.
Gone are the days of Numan’s oppressively apocalyptic pre Terminator vision of machines gone bad and the sci-fi weirdly unworldly soundscapes that bleakly undercut Dr Who’s persistent portrayal of mechanoid fascism, lo-fi electronica has mutated with stealth like yearning in recent years embracing a chameleon like focus and stealing for itself from all manner of genres into cross pollinating sub species.
For all those who simply, just simply, thought that electronica couldn’t play high jinks with your emotions then up pops this simply stunning and beautiful release a truly rhyming collision of tip toing trip wired beats and alluring ambient wantonness, where the ethereal meets the elegiac head on, squeaking, clicking and squelching with a yearning passion that encompasses Fort Dax’s crystal tipped elegance found on ‘At Bracken’ and ISAN’s snowed lullabies that frosted ‘Digitalis’ while hinting towards the more playful variants of Autechre, Wagon Christ and very early FSOL.
‘Special Measures’ is a glowing symphony of breath taking miniature symphonies, the sounds you hear rising from a winter long slumber peaking bleary eyed out onto the ice-scaped wilderness with a mixture of chilliness smouldering coolly against an inner warmth, both shy and sensual with a touch of dreaming candour its timeless and barren inclinations are stretched and comforted by flowing faraway visions. Opening with the superbly tender machinations of ‘Be Red or Yellow’, a graceful fusion of hanging melodic glazes a la Cocteau Twins and shuffling perky beats, Jeffries sets out his intentions immediately beckoning you inside his secret realm of ethereally etched signatures. The tentative ‘While making other plans’ coyly unfurls, a fragile toy box unwinds delicately tenderised by softly pulsing beats that orbit providing a hypnotic weave to endear the coldest of hearts, while ‘Spincycle’ bubbles and hums about nonchalantly locked in its own private universe slowly gaining momentum until your literally pinned to the wall by the heavy wash of coalescing jabbering electronics.
‘Roxburgh’ courts with a rustic feel wrapped longingly around a clockwork dynamic, chilling and refined, spiralling clicks leave minutiae footprints treaded cautiously across the hide out of Mum, enchanting to say the least. ‘This just in (C90 mix)’ shifts ever so slightly from the blueprint sparse overlaps and into the outer realms of krautrock. Sounding like a distant cousin of Echoboy’s ‘Scene 30’, cascading drone castings are peppered by swathes of sophisticated keys that could easily pass for Erik Satie on speed amid a meteor storm and then its to bed with the snoozing ‘Lewy Body’ which in all honesty is the Clangers rubbing the sleep from their eyes while orchestrating fluffy fun filled lullabies for the testcard. Sex music for toasters, you have been warned. Enchanting.
MARK BARTON
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