The 2kDozen 500: #240 - The Voluntary Butler Scheme, "The Grandad Galaxy"

This is from last year, but VBS is someone whose music I seem to miss very easily; not to mention confuse with Supreme Vagabond Craftsman, so it's as well I kept them quite so far apart as I did.

"Hiring a Car" starts in very promising, minimal, anti folk kinda style: just a looping beat on a drum kit. "Shake Me By The Shoulders" surrounds itself in Richard Hawley-like atmospherics but in a more modest and less shit fashion. There are telephone noises at the end that loom out of otherwise miraculous noises and into "Sky Shed".

There is some desperate unforced eccentricity going with the man behind his music, and it is one guy taking the responsibility for the music. I think. It's a fuller sound behind "To The Height Of A Frisbee" perhaps to match the romantic bent of the album. Jim Noir flavours smoke around "Umbrella Fight" with clockwork intricacy. "Phosphor Burn-In" is choral and dramatic in rather absentminded lackadaisical style. I haven't time to listen more than once, but I think the lyrics are about kids being cruel. The tune resolves itself it into a cellos and bleeps finale.

There's some pizzicato funk on "Don't Relay On It, Don't Count In" which suggests a broad palette. I'm too damned tired to think about this one properly, but I can't leave it until tomorrow. This tune does have another dimenson too. Nice breaks on "Satisfactory Substitute" too. I admire those who can make with words and beats at the same time: they are a one-person orchestra. "I wanna play/A losing game with somebody new," he sings on "Manuals". "Stone" is another love song, more sounds that sound like they've been wrung out of domestic appliances and wise old wallpaper.

"D.O.P.L." wanders over into Four Tet territory and holds its hands aloft to greet the sun. I had another thing to write here, but tiredness has robbed me of that too. Lou says I should drink more water. "Empty Hand" has the same tinkling feel, then some kind of cajun fiddle sample busies itself in its middle. He's lyrically lovelorn/obsessive again. Dirty leads vocals in contrast to the clean and clear choral backing noises; he's subsumed in the music he's made for himself. Blimey. "POW" is the same collection of stuff at the close.

Rating: Eccentricity out of Ninth Dimension