| Leaf struck gold with their last Mush licensed offering, Boom Bip & Doseone's dizzyingly imaginative unlearnt hip-hop opus Circle. This, the latest product of their relationship with the US left-field label packs a similar punch in a slightly different field. Another hero of richly textured melodic electronic music has arrived. Clue to Kalo is the alias of 23-year-old Australian Mark Mitchell, who, in a comparable vein to masters of the art Manitoba and Four Tet (no coincidence there), has retained the mechanical sonic elements one associates with electronica whilst crafting compositions that resonate with an exquisitely human beauty. Other than the broad stylistic likeness to his aforementioned contemporaries, there are echoes of the humbling intimacy of latter-day Bjork ("Still We Felt Bulletproof") and the laptop-mangled chop and rip of Wauvenfold ("I Think We Can Kinetic"), while "This Dies Over Distance" recalls the skeletal digital melodicism of Dntel. Mitchell sets himself apart, however, by allowing his songs to meander into new, ever-dreamier territories, never prematurely curtailing strong, repetitive motifs no matter how wildly they veer from the song's initial path, always allowing space for potentials to blossom. When he adorns these multi-faceted synthetic symphonies with the fragile simplicity of his own vocal delivery and plaintive, folky instrumentation, one starts to wonder what a Spiritualized electronic record might sound like: could a laptop literate Jason Pierce conjure up the sense of measured, opiated majesty that Clue to Kalo summons so effortlessly here? A seductive proposition. But to consider Come Here When You Sleepwalk merely in relation to the work of others is to insult its credentials as an accomplished, heartfelt masterpiece in its own right. In a year that is to be punctuated by big releases from most of electronica's luminaries, we shall be truly spoilt if any of them can better this. - Big Chill |
2XLP/Out Of Print