CD: Slugabed: Time Team (2012)

Greg Feldwick is 23 years old and from Bath. He makes noises as Slugabed. His first releases were on Stuff, Ramp and then Planet Mu but now he is signed to the mothership, Ninja Tune. His music is suffused with a unique mix of humour, next level production, dancefloor smarts and melancholic emotion. “Time Team” is his debut album and we think it’s a belter.

The album opens with “New Worlds", a heroic trudge across a vast space landscape, followed by the single “Sex”, a place of wildly suggestive synth squelch. He then takes us deeper, delving into the disembodied anime of “All This Time” and on to “Moonbeam Rider” which combines digital lyncanthropy with a kind of deep funk groove that ought to come with a warning label. Along with the nervous squeals of "Travel Sweets" and the widescreen spangling of “Unicorn Suplex” this is a record that evokes a very particular, very peculiar, but never less than beautiful worldview. An album highlight is “Mountains Come of The Sky”, which has a wonderful rolling rhythm and uplifting vocal, whilst the synth melody goes stratospheric at the mid-point. “Grandma Paints Nice,” distills yet more warmth and emotion from supposedly synthetic sounds, and “Climbing A Tree” sounds like the slow and wonderful death of a computer clinging on to its last, implanted false memory Asked to explain “Time Team,” Feldwick responds that “it's to do with deep feelings about mostly inexpressible things.” It is indeed an album full of feeling and warmth and humor, a remarkable feat for a record composed mainly on synthesisers and drum machines. You will be hearing a lot more of Slugabed. Something witty about crystals or whatever nonsense we were banging on about earlier.