Given a well deserved four-star rating by us in January, Metamono‘s adroit, manifesto-pledged, Tape EP, questioned the soullessness and the lack of “Primal energy” in electronic music. Laying down a set of ground rules which led to the adoption of bygone analogue equipment to produce a warmer, glowing modern form of electronica, the London trio added some welcoming variety to the genre.
Since then the triumvirate of Jono Podmore, Paul Conboy and Mark Hill have started their own, maverick, record label, Instrumentarium. Parcel Post is the inaugural release, pressed on a 10″ vinyl and in Mono – in keeping with the groups idiosyncratic, if not, outsiders’ status of choosing outmoded formats; past releases have even been brought out of cassette tapes.
Reversing to go forward, Metamono infuse a touch of raw energy and fun into the, far too often, stale and faceless blankness of electronic music; fashioning a odd radiophonic synthesis of atavistic futurism. This time around the tracks have a certain floating, dub-esque feel and quality, and reach out further into the unexplored reaches of space. Mattressphere is a 11-minute throbbing propelled voyage that sounds like The Orb if they teamed up with Mouse On Mars for a motoring acid-house project. Gently colliding and skipping beats ride over a roving baseline as the reverberations of wafting radio transmissions breeze in and out of the cosmic-techno grooves on this, the longest Metamono recorded track yet.
Taking a more menacing and magnetic-charged tone is the minimalistic, Jabjab. Working off a scuttling drum-machine beat, the hypnotic motorik mood accelerates down the Nebula highway. Adding a touch of the supernatural, the theremin turns mysterious signals into angelic soaring coos from the surface of the Forbidden Planet: a paean to the stars. The final wondrous exploration of Glue Shoes seeks sedate surroundings; languishing as it does in oscillated washes and pulses of bounding, bouncing and rasping modulator convoluted effects that transports the listener to a strange outer world swamp.
If the Tape EP was a imbued scion of Basic Channel and R&S, then Parcel Post is a revisionist nod to Rising High and Harthouse. IDM (or intelligent dance music) has never sounded more spirited, harmonious and skilled.
18/06/2012
[Rating:4]
http://www.metamono.co.uk/
