Martin Carr used to be a songwriter with lively Liverpool Britpop pioneers the Boo Radleys. When the band split he shifted to Cardiff, set down his guitar, learned how to make Aphex Twin style electronica and re-named himself Bravecaptain. His releases so far under his new moniker have seen him gradually move away from the world of indie pop and into the more underground domain of the digitally abstract.
As Carr has keenly explored this new sonic multi-verse, his musings have notably sacrificed the melodic for the off-beat, mostly in an authentically artistic way though sometimes with detriment to the music.
The title of his second Bravecaptain full-length album suggests a warmer searching-for-the-soul-of-the-machines mentality; indeed, Carr presents for the first time a cohesive set of songs that are machine made yet emphatically humane and more well rounded than previous material. This is not to say that his muse is not still wilfully weird. His cross-genre experimenting is more than a little evident, as on the stoned folk-reggae of "Little Giant", the experiments with hip hop’s ever-flexible form on "Flow Machines" and the indie-dance amalgam "Weaponized".
Yet there is a sense here that he is seeking something more than superficial genre-blending. Carr has always wanted to create his very own sound, and for the first time we are starting to hear it here. The tracks on the album merge together fluidly despite their inner diversity, and despite also some strange juxtapositions (see the positioning of the bleak "Bethesda" between two upbeat tracks).
"Into Thin Air"’s gently maverick strum and bleep seems inherently connected to the accessible optimism of "Good Life". Similarly, the machine grooves of "Metamorphic Rocks" somehow bond with the eerie elegance of "Every Word You Sound".
It’s not the kind of project to grab the attention of radio programmers or mainstream music award organisers, but as a personal document and a creative statement, it’s nonetheless a very real achievement.
