The Buoys - Grillo Parlante

Reeking of old super-8 film, musty projection rooms, and sepia-toned beauty, The Buoys debut album fills headphones with a delicate, melancholic beauty. Exploring the undulating terrain of minimal static usually populated by Burnt Friedman or Farben, The Buoys prolong simple loops by carefully adding layers of detail to produce cinematic, refined passages that come across like the Cinematic Orchestra's weirdest material. The artwork suggests they're trying to emulate J Swinscoe's Man With a Movie Camera soundtrack, but there's a tendency towards electronic blops and bleeps that distances them from that particular brand of post-bop trouser jazz. When they indulge unadulterated instrumentation, like the acoustic guitar passage on Dehli Handkerchief, the effects are spellbinding, though the doomy electric that rears its head on Spider sounds altogether too much like the riff from Spinal Tap's Stonehenge. Their mastery of dubby, watery soundscapes is wonderful and the album suggests this is one to watch. Now all they need is the right film. [Liam Arnold]