Minotaur Shock - Amateur Dramatics
With a suggested price of £6.39 for the whole album, Minotaur Shock might just be underselling themselves
Record buying can be costly in these credit crunching times; all those fancy boxsets and reissues don’t come cheap. But thankfully for the discerning listener, Minotaur Shock-monikered IDM purveyor David Edwards is not one to miss a trick. For his forthcoming release, Amateur Dramatics, he has turned to Radiohead for inspiration, adopting a ‘pay what you want’ policy with his own unique slant: suggested prices for each individual track according to criteria set by the maker himself. But is it worth it? Without a doubt, yes. Pounding Detroit techno funk, Zappa-esque electronic jams, pastoral folk, acid breakdowns, blissful Balearic armlifters, often all combined in the same segue. You could no doubt leach this for free off the internet, but sometimes it's worth paying fair dinkum for your sonic fix. And with a suggested price of £6.39 for the entire album, he might just be underselling himself. [Pete Ballantine]