RocketNumberNine

If you just looked at RocketNumberNine's credits (releasing material for Soul Jazz and Smalltown Supersound, collaborations with Four Tet, opening for Radiohead), you'd get a pretty good idea of the duo's musical M.O. On their debut full-length, MeYouWeYou, the London, UK-based Page brothers composed nine live drum and synth instrumental pieces that draw their energy from live performance more than texture and style. Tracks like the metallic "Steel Drummer" and the rubbery "Deadly Buzz" stretch out and take on their own distinct aural personalities. Although RocketNumberNine structure each song on MeYouWeYou like it was a long-form electronic piece, tracks like bouncy percussion love fest "Rotunda" and distorted guitar dragger "Black and Blue" resemble funk, jam and rock's peripheral motives. If anything, MeYouWeYou is an ambitious and confident record from a band with enough smarts to keep one foot in the electronic realm while letting the other roam free.