Dauphin

Found are an Edinburgh arts collective whom I more or less knew of but not much about, until one of the members of the arts-branch – one of my linguistics professors no less – namedropped them in a special lecture he gave last night. I realise that’s a weird place to hear about a band from; but there’s a new album out and this is an apt time to cover their music. Also, I finally got around to downloading Spotify today, so I’m pretty on the ball for a Wednesday.

factorycraft is the product of Ziggy Campbell, Tommy Perman and Kev Sim; it’s the fourth album and it came out last week. Those are the facts. Their brand of experimental pop is hard to label; fans of similarly androgynous-genred acts like The Phantom Band and Damon Albarn will be easily drawn in by the careening, dazed sounds exhibited here. Campbell’s distinctive Scots lilt serves as a balancing foil to the off-kilter rhythms and Rubik’s cube guitar melodies; this sense of rolling and taking the musical path less travelled like the fictional Cloud Atlas Sextet is at its greatest on Lowlandless – though the range shown across the album means this playful nature can be found incarnated in any of the songs.

Whilst the most fully realised track is the minimalist-leaning Shallow, with its tense guitar lead-in and sweeping synths, growing to a wave of fizzing sound, the whole album is a lethal broadside of audio shot, fired straight into the port side of modern polystyrene pop.

Rating: DDDD