Trouble Over Tokyo - Pyramides

Trouble Over Tokyo is the stage name of Toph, a Londoner whose sophomore album endeavours to broaden the perceived paradigm of the one-man band as we know it. As well as writing and performing everything on Pyramides, Toph has assumed total control, going so far as to scribble some artwork for the occasion. The result is an album of unexpectedly fresh and reassuringly well crafted pop songs separated from the norm by the double-pronged attack of Toph's striking vocal acrobatics and (you guessed it) Toph's embrace of measured industrial production. Pyramides draws as many parallels with Timberlake as he does Rice and many another troubadour. Amidst the splintered beats and beeps there's an acoustic sensibility accentuated by the piano-led like of Save Us and The Dark Below. Certainly, he descends into lyrical schmaltz from time to time, but by passing up the opportunity to whine, he may just have given his genre another string to its bow. [Finbarr Bermingham]