Cheer - Static Traps

If you like the clicks, decay, silences and surface noise of music then Benbecula have something truly special for you. Cheer creates a faultless balance of textures in his sound, utilising gentle plucked guitar, counter-pointed with what sounds like the dying milliseconds of feedback looped over and over. But equally important to the pieces is that he employs a similar ethos to the likes of minimal techno godhead Ricardo Villalobos or artists on the sadly defunct Mille Plateaux label; on the surface, it may seem like 'simple' repetition - in this case of his treated guitar - but listen deeper and there is a turbulent mix of crackles, drones and pulses that becomes infinitely absorbing. On listening, you'll suddenly become aware, 3 tracks in, that you've stopped what it is you are doing, and that you're sitting very very still in order to hear every last minute sound. Microscopically brilliant. [Matt Gollock]