Artist: Duo
Career: recording since 1996
Language: English
Genre: Abstract synth pop
Animals, suns and atoms is a decidedly odd record, and since part of the fun of listening to music is hearing what madcap ideas those musician-types will come up with next, it deserves its place in the top 100.
Do you know people who are hobby-bricoleurs? Somehow they’ve obtained a full set of little bolts and screws (it fell off a truck, it was lying there, got it at the flea market) perfect for fitting together an old Swiss clock. They’ve got all the tiny parts laid out with care on a cloth, and they set to work, slowly, methodically – this might take years! Finally it’s done, except for the five pieces they just couldn’t get to fit in there, and the whole thing takes your temperature instead of telling the time, and it looks like a radioactive pet. That’s this record!
You can perfectly hear all the tiny fragments of sound, all the little loops they’ve got going – all of them make sense taken separately, but they never exactly fit the way Tarwater let them overlap. These are some decidedly wobbly constructions. But that’s the charm. They try to make this as close to synthetic pop heaven as they can, but the songs refuse to function exactly right, and you get these strange mutant forms.
That’s one way of looking at it. The other is more in line with the cover: more bricolage, but with nature involved. Maybe at some point these tracks did function right, and Tarwater speeded up their natural erosion: buried the tapes in pot soil, washed them in the stream, let them blow in the wind. Nature is always at the gates of our technical constructions, waiting for us to lose attention to sweep back in there and reclaim lost ground. It won’t be long before there are branches and leaves sticking out of the speaker set, flowers nestling in its cones. I wouldn’t put it past those Tarwater guys if they’re helping nature along.
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