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News
Brian Eno singing praises of Keyboard Choir
Words Rich Hanscomb
Burbling, analogue bubble bath synths; resonating passages of lo-fidelity; symphonic splendour; and prog rock song titles. Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in space. Welcome to the world of Keyboard Choir.
This Oxford sextet creates what could be described as acid-scarred amniotic drift muzak, but this ain’t no whale music shtick. It’s far too gloriously ramshackle and melodically sussed for any of that tedium, as James and Seb from the band explain. “We want to make electronic music a live entity,” they say. “We’re really anti that whole one man and a laptop routine. Keyboard Choir is much more... rock’n’roll. Ady acts as a conductor and we all work around him. It works on a spectacle scale and practical level.”
James and Seb speak as one down the phone, finishing each other’s sentences in jocular and brotherly fashion, so much so that I can’t tell which one is talking at any one time. Yup, these guys aren’t your typical electronica outfit.
“We feel an affinity with Battles,” they say, “although they’re almost the opposite of us. They’re trying to make clinical dance music within a rock set up. We’re trying to make electronic music more human.”
James and Seb also cite nu rave, “phat beats” and shoegaze as reference points. Most telling, however, is their professed desire “to fuse low-brow and high-brow culture” in their melting pot of influences. Indeed, what Keyboard Choir do with aplomb is combine their electronic soundscapes with a sense of magisterial beauty.
“Yankee XO by Godspeed You! Black Emperor was such an important record for us,” they say. “We strive to be as powerful and emotive, but with electronic music. It’s easy to do with guitars, less so with our set-up. That’s the challenge.”
And it’s a challenge they’ve risen to and met with ease on their debut album, Mizen Head To Gascanane Sound.
“It was recorded during a seven night stay in County Cork, the southwestern-most point in Ireland,” they explain. “The name was written on a map in the studio and it evoked the feeling of isolation which informs the music.”
Studious scientists of sound they may be, but Keyboard Choir also know how to bring the noise. They’ll be playing with Portland indie legends Jackie-O Motherfucker soon and they’ve become something of a fixture at Truck Festival, thanks in part to their dancing robot sideshow.
“We’d built up a reputation in Oxford, so we thought we’d do it on a grand scale,” they say. “Freddy in the band spends his life routing through skips, creating robots. Then we got our friends to wear the suits and it worked.”
Even Brian Eno, who was in attendance, was mightily impressed.
“You can’t ask for higher praise,” they concede.
