That warm, quiet clicking noise? Why, it’s the sound of the point gliding calmly over the horizon. A mere six months after their last outing into adequate aquatic electronica and isan roar back, this time with a comprehensive understanding of the methods used by [a]Boards Of Canada[/a].
By rights we should be encouraging the Southend/Reading duo’s independent-minded, cautiously experimental analogue nostalgia, but really, no matter how you approach ‘Digitalis’, it’s like trying to get excited about milk. There’s nothing significantly wrong with Anthony Ryan and Robin Saville‘s innocuous, bedroom-borne exotica, yet when they ask to be placed in the same league as peers Add N To (X) and Plone, it’s here that their shortcomings are openly revealed.
Perhaps the mini-album format doesn’t do isan justice, stifling ideas when a longer record would allow them to expand upon the pocket-Vangelis brooding of ‘Reno’ or, on ‘M Mouse’, not interpret [a]Boards Of Canada[/a]’s clockwork psychedelia quite so faithfully. It’s a step on from their ‘Beautronics’ debut album, certainly, but when even To Rococo Rot seem furiously dynamic by comparison, you know there’s work to be done.
In the meantime, let this gather dust in your record collection. Who knows, you might even play it more than once.