Magnetophone – I Guess Sometimes I Need To Be Reminded Of How Much You Love Me

I love this album. I love the fact that 4AD released it, confirming their diversity in genres. This historic label is also the home of perennial camp fire heroes Mojave 3, and a more different band to them would be difficult to come across than Magnetophone.

I Guess Sometimes… is ambient in the style of Pete Namlook and is a significant development on ambient guru Aphex Twin, with delicate instrumentation on tracks like Why Stop When It Feels So Good and paradoxic percussion on Frankholmes’ Drive.

I particularly love track 8, Air Methods, which is nothing like these and instead fuses piles of quiet electronics into a rich texture that is as close as synths will ever get to being quantized air guitars. Grateful, Aren’t We? is another arresting track and one of several that would sound wonderful in a movie, perhaps in a dream sequence or in space…

It will be fascinating to see how Matt Saunders and John Hanson’s beautifully crafted work of electronica translates to a live stage, but in the meantime, buy this album, put it on your Discman and don’t take it off for a very long time.