Gigomaphone

Tight as a drum, Microcastle is like a fusion of mid ’90s hazed out dream-pop and well schooled punk and it’s very, very good. That said, albums like Microcastle don’t pop up too often. Reading at first like a playlist of short but punchy and melodic proto-punk cuts, the album expands into more dreamy atmospheres, with the guitars taking a back seat to a swathe of ambient pulsewidth. It then concludes with three or four seriously good tracks, all bound together with miasmic guitar and swirling atmospherics.

Whilst this has been plonked in the ‘dream pop’ basket by some, it is far broader and darker than that and there’s much more of a foothold here. There is an elemental punk ethic going on within the mix but it’s a buffed over sound, more ambient than noise but not mush- not by any stretch.

Deerhunter hail from Atlanta, Georgia, USA. I must admit I’d never heard of them before but it would seem I’ve caught them at about the right time as this is by all accounts their tightest and most focussed effort yet. Recommended.

5/5