Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 13/6/05
Label: 4AD

The glaring absence of clarinets in today's popular music means that - forget foul lyrics, squealing feedback and foot-wronging time signatures - the opening minute of "Maritime"'s opening track has you checking the CD sleeve for affirmation that yes, this is a cool electronica album (check) and it is in fact on 4AD (check) and not Deutsche Grammophon. Add to this maverick woodwind action the fact it is wholly instrumental (save tiny, almost imperceptible bits of hum and "ooh"), and apparently inspired by Daphne Du Maurier and the SS Great Britain, and you've got yourself one of the most radical and refreshing albums of the year.

Think Giorgio Moroder, The Art of Noise and Michael Nyman with - if you like your reference points with less padded shoulders - a touch of New Order and Boards of Canada. It would also sit most comfortably amongst the European arthouse movie scores of Yann Tiersen ('Amelie' included).

David Edwards, aka Minotaur Shock, a veteran electronica wiz who has remixed for the likes of Super Furry Animals, Badly Drawn Boy and Bloc Party, clearly knows his ships. As well as multiple sea shanty echoes in tracks like "Vigo Bay" and "Hilly", opening track "Muesli" builds-up gently to evoke the sound of a hundred yachts' rigging jangling and jostling in the breeze (think cowbells, tambourines, glockenspiel, accordion, triangle, wood blocks and Columbus knows what else).

"She's In Dry Dock Now", meanwhile - despite coming dangerously close to the sort of ambient chill-out traditionally used to accompany Sarah Beeny around a kitchen extension - is a curiously poignant piece whose upbeat elegant melody which gives way to a lump-in-throat-inducing faded military brass band, capturing brilliantly what Edwards
The album's masterpiece, however, is "Somebody Once Told Me It Existed But They Never Found It": "a musical representation of a short film I imagined" (Edwards again) featuring more pretty beats and sounds, acoustic guitar, weird electronic sea sirens, and more. This is an album that could launch a thousand ships.

    by Anna Britten