MAGNETOPHONE - The Man Who Ate The Man

The Magnetophone are back, unsung champions of the British electro scene (and indeed the European one too), after a good five years of silence. That's the span of time separating their first album ("I Guess Sometimes I Need To Be Reminded Of How Much You Love Me"; 4AD, 2000) from their second, over the course of which feeling, interplay and songwriting all seem, if nothing else, to have matured. What emerges from this new record on 4AD is still that electro voyeurism made of restless ambient bravado, dreamy lo-fi vocals and creative sampling as its connective tissue. It opens with a goosebump-inducing a cappella synth music-box ("Let's Start Something New"), while electro geiger-clicks endlessly erode its perception, before moving into the sly, psychedelic sampling of processed guitar-sound, bolstered by a Moby-esque upbeat ("Kel's Vintage Thought").

The spectacular kraut hyperkinesis of "Benny's Insobriety" projects an outer space of kaleidoscopic Cluster-like phrasings in reverse, rotating melodic cells, supersonic drum'n'bass, and — right in the middle — a suspended sense of virtual immensity: avant-IDM. "The Only Witching You'll Be Doing" kicks off with a lo-fi arpeggio before being submerged by solemn, ultra-distorted shoegaze strumming, where even the slide of fingers along the fretboard gives rise to pure emotional radiation. Then there's "Rae And Suzette", with its fine Disco Inferno-esque mimicry built from mixer stabs, torn between a mystically swirling organ and firework samples used as aleatory rhythmic sparks, or "Kodiak" with its alien percussive sampling, or again the prayer-like "A Sad Ha Ha (Circled My Demise)", built on spectral synth stasis and dissonant swirls in the distance.

The second half of the record shapes these elements into pieces that feel, if anything, even more heartfelt. "Motion G", static and mournful, rides a Thievery Corporation-style trip-hop accompaniment that cradles a muted raga gradually spreading outward. "I've Been Looking Around Me" is a dreamy, rustic vignette with a trilling sampled piano, accordions panned across both stereo channels and a gospel-blues vocal. "In The Hours After", a small gem of mimicry wrestling with the ghost of the riff from the Stones' "Street Fighting Man", would make the current-day Caribou green with envy. Finally, "Let's Start Something Smooth", a varied reprise of the opener (tambourine, acoustic guitars and vocal line), scoops the listener back up after so much timbral and harmonic disorientation. On their second attempt, John Hanson and Matt Huish Saunders (both born and based in Birmingham) offer up a lasting recipe of acoustic shaping — equal parts brainy elucubration and originality of expression, careful attention to the overall narrative, and a long-distance sensibility that sets up the shot and radiates outward in multiple directions, effectively. Not trivial post-production tricks, but empirical (existential?) research into the brilliant range of sound (of humanity?).

Among the album's special guests, the terrible Deal sisters (who for the occasion have reinvented themselves as phantasmagorical ambient-pop nymphets) cut a decent figure. A picturesque, composite self-definition: "Alpha Beti Bon-Tempi Underwater Electro-Hydro Sound-Fusion".

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30/04/2026