Demob Happy

Four Tet – Ringer EP 7.5/10 I was once quite seasonally adjusted when it came to music. Spring and summer inspired me to listen to more notionally natural textures – let’s say alt-country, Americana or folk – while the onset of winter used to find me needing something more machine-driven. In recent years I’ve been [...]

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FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT Exile on ’25th Street’ 8.5/10 ‘NYC‘ is Kieran Hebden’s (aka Four Tet) fourth collaboration with veteran jazz drummer Steve Reid and while I won’t pretend that I have heard the other three, the word in the blogosphere is that this is the most equal of their partnerships, [...]

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One day in Buneos Aires 6.5/10 FIRST PUBLISHED AT THE LINE OF BEST FIT Juana Molina is a former Argentine television actress with an unlikely passion for making a kind of cut and paste folk-tinged electronica (look, I managed to do that without saying ‘folktronica’). Molina’s latest album for Domino comprises eight lengthy, carefully assembled [...]

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Melody days from the artist formerly known as Manitoba 8/10 It took me a long time to get over how mediocre Caribou’s last album ‘The Milk of Human Kindness‘ was. After the psychedelic onslaught of ‘Up in Flames‘ (recorded under previous moniker ‘Manitoba’), his sophomore record was an exercise in plodding 60s-infused futility. I tried [...]

Irene - Caribou [ 3:38 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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‘Central And Remote’ 8/10 I came across Grizzly Bear via Dan Rossen’s brilliant – but wholly different – earlier project Department of Eagles. I was initially underwhelmed and bemused, but I persevered and can back previous reviewers who have labelled this a grower. If like me you have come to Grizzly Bear via Department of [...]

Grizzly Bear - Easier [ 3:44 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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Laptop pagan folk – what else? 6/10 Although the term ‘Folktronica’ seems to be used entirely as a derogatory term now, it is a useful word to help describe this album, which is a fairly literal fusion of folk songwriting and the glitchy textures of electronica. Unfortunately, it is the songwriting that lets the album [...]

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Cook the books 6/10 One of the most strangely overrated albums of recent memory, the release of Food for Thought brought such gushing press reaction that it certainly seemed worth the gamble. A low-key blend of manipulated found sound (people laughing, gates squeaking shut, sampled voices), cut ‘n’ spliced acoustic guitar, banjo and violin, and [...]

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Boys in the Hood 8/10 I’d never really heard of Hood before picking up on this album. For me its something of a find. It manages to evoke a particularly English kind of pastoral melancholy without being starkly folksy. On the contrary, as it happens, ‘The Negatives’ pulses with a strangely mutated R&B/Hip hop loop, [...]

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Mixed bag 7/10 Pedro’s (aka James Rutledge) debut album is part ‘folktronica’ (see Four Tet) part DJ Shadow. This is not to say the style is an amalgam of both these genres and artists but rather that he flicks between these two spheres of influence. ‘Intro’ and ‘Outro’ are essentially one track split into two, [...]

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