There’s a question I just can’t answer: why is it I love analogue synthesizers so much? I really don’t know why, but I’m an absolute sucker for the sound of these things. Maybe it’s memories of the sound of the future when I was a kid? Maybe it’s a subliminal influence of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and Delia Derbyshire on my listening, before I knew who or what they were? Whatever the answer, I fall for them every time.
That’s why I’m currently loving Eine Kleine Nacht Musik’s eponymous album – it’s chocked full of wires and transistors housed in retro-futurist boxes that look like pieces of G-plan furniture. Sitting somewhere amongst a musical Venn diagram of Kraut/Motorik, Kraftwerk, Harmonia, Raymond Scott and, when the rhythms are ratcheted up, more modern outings like Add N to X, Eine Kleine Nacht Musik is all highly engineered hover-cars, jet-packs and extraterrestrial Autobahns. The only downside is some nicely played but trying-to-hard-to-be-trippy sitar action here and there (especially on ‘Die Fontane’).
And in turns out that Eine Kleine is Henry Smithson (also known as Riton) who once worked in Fat City Records here in Manc. This piece of minor trivia was only discovered on a post-purchase Last.fm search having already been into said outlet to see if they had the album earlier in the day…which they didn’t. For a whole series of prejudiced reasons I usually avoid Fat City. Perhaps it’s time to open my eyes and de-cloth the ears and pay more attention to what’s going on therein. This certainly should be the case if Eine Kleine is anything to go by.
You live and learn and then you croak, but on the way you’re given pleasure by little gems like this.
Re-hydrate your lunch and float off to buy it here
angrybonbon
