Penpushers - 'Art Mechanics / Void Engineers'

These two mini-albums taken together make up 'Our Golden Age of Invention', and a more apt title could not be found. This is Penpushers at their envelope-pushing best. The twin-tracked vocals echo in and out of each other in a dubby, smoked-out way on the vocal tracks, while the aerodynamic scratching and carefully chosen samples of the instrumentals are epic, soaring in their composition. The strings on Power Animal are like approaching thunder, the scratches like flashes of fork lightning. On Art Died in a Setup, everyone from Van Gogh to HR Giger is namechecked, while the eloquence and intelligence of Carnivorous Moon and This Old Guitar show that not only are the Penpushers Edinburgh's formost MCs, they are also highly gifted poets, with a breadth and depth of reference and structural skills that trump most MCs in the game. Moody, atmospheric, highbrow - not everyone's cup of tea perhaps, but an artistic legacy that will no doubt endure. [Bram Gieben]