SCULPTURE

Like its predecessor 'Rotary Signal Emitter', this is a proper headful of intuitive sample mulching and cheap, busted electronics, bubbling and fried with a knowing sense of psychedelia. In the course of eleven tracks on 'Toad Blinker' Dan Hayhurst clearly rejects the normative values imposed on Techno which so many producers get bogged down in and ends up with something genuinely marvellous and thoroughly endearing. OK it might not rock a dancefloor, per se, but its rocking our tiny minds more than almost any bangers you might care to mention. A deliriously haphazard hand is at work here, conducting fragmented tape loops and lo-fi analogue electronics through battered reel-to-reel, CD player, hardware sampler and FX units, but all the while keeping a crucial sense of groove, the sort of feel for rhythm which makes records by Ekoplekz and Diamond Catalog some of our favourites this year. It's batty in the best possible sense, and well recommended to fans of the aforementioned or even Raymond Scott, Dick Raaijmakers, Bruno Spoerri etc. (Boomkat)