Neon Golden

Do androids dream of electric sheep? And similarly, does electronica ever go beyond great feats of sonic cleverness – and, occasionally, great beauty – to also possess a warm human heart? In 2002, the year after the beat-boxed dose of palpable humanity that wasThe Big Romance, we know that it does; and the door that our own marvellous Kittser opened (in our consciousness, anyway), The Notwist now walk through.

Like David Kitt, funnily enough, The Notwist also use the reedy breath of layered brass – saxophones, mostly – to inspire tactile life into their delicately hard-wired bedroom-studio pop. And indeed you’d be forgiven, upon listening to the urgent, gently locomotive ‘Pilot’ – all fleeting vistas as seen through Eurostar windows – for thinking it’s David Kitt’s newest. But the Notwist are a lot more Warp Records, and, simultaneously, trawl a wider, stranger sea. Atop these itty-bitty Aphex Twin-calibre small-noise-scapes are moony, creaking strings á la ’30s film scores (‘Solitaire’), acoustic old-skool blues straight out of a Mississippi field recording (the title track), Mellotron flutes, banjos, raindrop-plucks of pizzicato strings á la Penguin Café Orchestra, and gorgeously live drums. And if Markus Acher’s doleful vocals (think an introverted Kings Of Convenience) and endlessly-unrequited lyrics sometimes venture dangerously close to twee, it’s an easy thing to forgive.

Most surprising is ‘One With The Freaks’, which starts in beatbox-and saxophone territory before blooming out of nowhere into a massive guitar-pop single. “Have you ever been honester?” Markus breathes as drums and e-bow swoop to a perfect pop climax. Electronica rarely has.