Shugo Tokumaru – Port Entropy

Live, Shugo Tokumaru plies his trade with little more than an acoustic guitar and an effects pedal or two. It’s near impossible to imagine Port Entropy as the product of such modest labour; rather, it evokes some manner of elaborate clockwork contraption – a mechanical contrivance of finely-tuned percussion and alchemic music-box delights.

Turning Port Entropy’s crank animates pistons and cogs, causing beautiful harmonies to skip through tubes and pipes, delivering melodies that blend child-like whimsy with intricate musicianship, eccentric invention with dreamy nostalgia. While Tokumaru is evidently fond of the sixties Brit sound – Drive-Thru closely echoes The Kinks’ Picture Book – he successfully stakes out new ground. Tracking Elevator and Rum Hee offer two particularly transformational examples of his fourth album’s considerable charms, the latter managing to trump Jónsi in the day-glo elf-pop stakes. As the cogs settle with Malerina’s enchanting finale, Port Entropy begs to be wound afresh. [Chris Buckle]