Ever wondered what it would be like letting a dozen or so monks loose with Pro Tools and a copy of Cubase? Well your idle fantasies have been quietly answered in the form of ‘Spokes’.
First meeting at school in the early eighties, Andy Turner and Ed Handley of Plaid have long been spinning and refining their diverse and considerable yarn for abiding forefathers of modern electronica, Warp Records. So it’s quality assured, as far as we’re concerned. No doubts about that.
Starting life during last year’s tours of America and Europe ‘Spokes’ is their fourth album proper in this current guise of ‘Plaid’. It was only on their return, however, that Plaid were able to offer the project a further five months of paring down and refining the raw elements. Not that anything truly passes for raw here, pursuing as it does an impeccable and stylised score of static noise and delicate soundscapes.
From the haunting Gregorian lullaby of opening song ‘Even Spring’ to the subterranean bass of ‘Crumax Rins’ it’s an album of extremes unified only by the grace with which each individual sound has been meticulously considered and the signature ringing chords and tenuto piano wires it uses.
Spooky, melancholic, haunting and hypnotic, it listens like a ride through some interstellar wormhole: dazzling supernovas to the left you of you, milky cosmic wavelengths to the right. And yet for all it’s tingling, vibrant spaceageyness, there’s a niggling mystic darkness lurking just below the surface.
If you’re looking for commoner hooks to hang this monkey on, check out tracks like ‘Zeal’ and ‘B Born Droid’. Never before has the ghost of Japan and David Sylvian been so strikingly tangible as an influence today as on a handful of tracks on ‘Spokes’. Just listen to those ghostly and forbidden key lines and those harsh and steely echo chambers. Strings have rarely sounded this exotic for years.
For breaks and new-romantic fetishists everywhere.