Drawn in Basic

This is the third album from Italian producer, Andrea Mangia aka Populous on Morr Music, with assistance from MC Short Stories aka Michael McGuire. Whereas Queue for Love (2005) curiously broadened the abstract-electronic foundations of his debut Quipo (2002) with the coordinates jazz, folk and especially soul (as an attitude as well as a sound), Drawn in Basic keeps your ears going in every direction. Andrea Mangia is captain and stowaway, songwriter and sound-bricoleur, with tracks that are tricky, polyphonic, and seconds later, four to the floor. Mangia is the type of person who fell in love with the feedbacking guitars of My Bloody Valentine equally as much he fell in love with the peculiar sounds of synthesizer pioneer, Raymond Scott. There are some peculiar synthesizers assembled on Drawn in Basic as well, not as a cool end in itself, but for their warm sounds. "Man Overboard" is a shoegazing melody, somewhere between indie-pop and disco. "Only Hope" is a charming hybrid of digital sounds and analog soul. "Days" piles up it's walls of sound higher and higher. Finally, "Breathes the Best" remains 2007's sparkling event, released as a vinyl single on a Number of Small Things, the little sister of Morr Music. This record is basic like the programming language of the same name, basic like the translation of analog pop music into a digital matrix, and basically beautiful.