Feedle

Like shitty garage punk in the ’80s and ’90s, everyone is making laptop music in 2007. The warping of lyrics through "painstaking” vocal masturbation has given way to the hoarding of sonics with digital manipulation. Incorporating found sounds, user-developed "patches” and simple synths is the new challenge for wankers who by and large once toiled with guitar solos. From this vantage point, Feedle’s Leave Now For Adventure welcomes much-needed integrity to the blasé genre of bedroom electronica. At times recalling Tomorrow-era Mum, and this year’s Neon Tetra, there is indeed adventure in following Feedle’s movements. "This Troubles All Dust” is underwhelming until a slow 4/4 beat gives way to a hushed hum befitting that Paul Simon/Chevy Chase video, a smooth prog organ breaks down the track into a crushing lead guitar, walking down to the dull razor staccato of a distorted pick slide, that same guitar only resurfacing to vaguely improvise its way through a choral finish. The endorsement of new technologies sometimes demands a degree of homage to the tried and true methods of the old. Check out the sirens on "Man vs. the Hallucinations” for an example of how to take something that sounds mediocre and push it overboard with a calculated splash. Without making overstated efforts to preserve one or the other, Feedle skilfully encroach on mastering the arts of the past and present.