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 Everett True

Song of the day – 282: Gyratory System

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Folk sometimes ask me how I discover music.

Fair question. Usually, it’s through networks. Friends on Facebook, strangers on Twitter, the occasional record company I trust, a PR or two… This is one of these such times: Chris Stone is a PR that I trust (she was with me the time we flew out to New York to interview Mazzy Star, and thence to Boston to meet Galaxie 500 again: she was with Rough Trade Records back when that stood for something: she handles Sonic Youth, and I certainly trust their taste). I often recommend her to femme-pop bands looking for UK representation. Whatever. So when she sent me a reminder email about Gyratory System‘s forthcoming (second) album – New Harmony, out 16 April, sonic depictions of London landmarks using analogue synthesisers, can you tell I’m reading from the press release? – I sit up and wish my bass woofer wasn’t sitting at such an odd way on my desk, bowed in the middle,  so that paper falls off it every time the squelchy bass noise reaches a certain depth.

Chris uses the words, “chattery brass, electro-beats, yummily squelchy, playful, intelligent, compelling and mysterious, at times coming close to the jittery, explorative journeys taken by Efterklang” to describe New Harmony and I don’t want you to feel like I’m being lazy here, but fuck it. Most critics would just lift several of these words and claim them for their own. I refuse to do that. Not enough coffee. Or too much. All I know is I love this music and that if my 20-month-old son Daniel was here he’d love it too, and that it bounces and quirks like a wind-up set of chattering teeth, and that it might well depict London aurally but fits in real nice with the a/c surroundings of The Gap, and that I love the way you never know what to expect next from all these “steam-powered sequencers”, and that the NME‘s description of their first album as  “Kraftwerk meets Looney Tunes” is right on the money, with a little Metronomy and 23 Skidoo thrown in, and that I could quite happily have this music on any hour of the day, any day of the week. I’m not sure there’s an actual quote in there that Chris can use – which is clearly part of the subtext of her reminding me to listen to this – so what about this?

“Gyratory System are hypnotic, spasmodic, lush. More fun than batting a battalion of Arcade Fire fans round the heads with the complete recorded works of Damo Suzuki” – Everett True, Collapse Board, 2011

And of course Chris will put a link to this website in her promotional literature for the album closer to the actual release date, and we’ll all be merry and have ourselves a 24-hour listening party of the third Kraftwerk album. Or something. Here. Have a listen to their 2010 single ‘Yowser Yowser Yowser (Reboot)’.

Oh, and Chris, while we’re here: you are going to help Las Kellies find a UK label – right?

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