Given the recent turn for the worse with the weather and feeling like we skipped spring and summer and went straight back to autumn you need an album like ‘Keep Warm … with the Warm Digits’ to well, warm the cockles of your heart. With it’s mishmash of Krautrock rhythms, English eccentric humour and Northern charm Andrew Hodson (drums and programming) and Steve Jefferies (guitar and synthesisers) have away of making you smile and forget about everything but the good times. Hodson and Jefferies’ partnership comes after past projects Cathode and The Matinee Orchestra and collaborations with Field Music.
Kicking off with ‘Warm Welcome’ full of tingling anticipation, sounding like a magical mechanical orchestra warming up waiting for the show to commence and then it’s straight into ‘Keep Warm’, with its Neu!-like atonal bass line and a Krautrock motorik beat that Jaki Liebezeit or Klaus Dinger would be proud of, metronomic but with a human element that keeps it organic.
There is a humour on the album that is shown with the Kraftwerk homage ‘Trans Pennine Express’, Warm Digits seem not to take themselves seriously in a way that reminds me of Bentley Rhythm Ace. This is emphasised even more with the quirky percussion on ‘Grapefruit’ counterpointing the John Carpenter-esque electro synths.
With ‘Weapons Destruction’ we are on def con one alert and the party has started, tearing everything down in a fuzzed up bounce along Choon. ‘One Track Groove’ is at it again, setting a repetitive groove and the track is built up layer upon layer, driving along and interspersed with fuzzed up psych riffs.
More sources of inspiration can be seen on closing tracks ‘The Surplus of Seeing’ with its melody line sounding like a cut from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop albums from the 70s and ‘The World In Small Doses’ setting it’s dainty chiming lead line against driving drums and pulsating bass line; in my mind a more dancey/electronic Mogwai.
The finale sums everything up and ‘Here Comes The Warm Digits’ is a blatant homage to Eno’s ‘Here Comes The Warm Jets’ with its euphoric modulated synths riding off in to the sunset with a big Warm (Digits) glow.
There is nothing new on ‘Keep Warm … with the Warm Digits’ but it is a joyous album that will have you bouncing along and smiling. I know this will be getting plenty of airing this summer come rain or shine.
Available now through Distraction Records
Posted by Chris Hughes
