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Album Review

Skoud Systems and Drafts
Motive Sounds

Article written by Ali S
Dec 3, 2005.

A breezy post-ambient wonderland from the blossoming Motive Sounds label, the flagship release and debut long-player from binary wunderkind Skoud will doubtless strike a sympathetic chord in any tender souls who’ll as readily disappear into their Ágætis Byrjuns as their Selected Ambient Works.

A magic carpet ride over 13 tracks of Skoud’s rhythmically restless terrain may not be a fully emphatic departure from its borders shared with Aphex Twin and Four Tet, but Systems And Drafts is nevertheless peppered with plenty of possible evolutions playfully bubbling under. Children’s voices, crowd murmurs and occasional husky harmony vox keep the ghost earthed in the machine, between a pristine web of glitches and woozy drones. There’s also sparse twangs of acoustic guitar (the most palpable Four Tet-ism on show), outbursts of kittenish ZX Spectrum-style motifs, and even odd slutty drum & bass flourishes working to shake off that pesky folktronica tag.

All these rogue waves are rendered with a surely-applied lightness of touch that keeps the record focussed, coherent and sweet as a marshmallow. Some of the names may be the personal notation of works-in-progress (‘System 3 Draft 2’ et al), but thumbnail sketches or not, all are consummate renderings that easily pass muster regardless. It’s electronic music you could take home to meet yer mam, like a Plaid album with the more obstinate left turns ironed out.

Hardened Warp-nerds may recoil at the accessibility of the results, but they’re welcome to spend all eternity sniffing out catchier material from their over-sized Drukqs LP boxes. The rest of us can kick back with a cup (or smoke) of herbal, and amiably float on the updrafts of a Skoud at play.

You can check out the video to System 3 Draft 2 here or download Fuck the Bats here.

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