a r t i s t : ISAN
t i t l e : Glow In The Dark Safari Set
d a t e : 2010
l a b e l : Morr Music
c a t : morr 099
s o u r c e : CDD
g e n r e : Electronic
r l s. d a t e : Jun/2010
t r a c k s : 11
b i t r a t e : VBRkbps
s i z e : 67,7 MB
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Robin Saville and Antony Ryan, two English gentlemen who
create music together under the nom de plume Isan, return with
their sixth full length album for their spiritual home of Morr
Music. ItÆs been a few years since IsanÆs previous outing, the
delectable electronic esoterica of Plans Drawn In Pencil, but
our heroes havenÆt been lazy. ôWe played some lovely shows on
the back of the album and then took an unintentional
sabbatical,ö explains Robin. ôAntony moved to Denmark and then
Sweden where he's now learning to be a glass blower. No
reallyö, he deadpans in as good natured a way one close friend
can talk about another. Robin also released a critically
acclaimed album himself, the agrarian electronica of Peasgood
Nonsuch. No wonder it took them a while to finish Glow In The
Dark Safari Set. The results, in (ahem) time-honoured Isan
tradition, are certainly worth the wait. Opener, Channel Ten,
with its Autobahn-assured poise, appropriately prefigures a
body of work that is IsanÆs finest to date. Inspiration for
this came from æemancipationÆ as Robin elaborates ôIt was an
attempt to jettison the weight of our back catalogue and get
back to the fun of making music. This entailed playing with
ancient Casios, mangled tape loops and squidgy noises. Very
hands-on. Most of the tracks on the album started life away
from the laptopö This giddy sense of enjoyment suffuses the
album û from the glistening rush of Merman Sound which segues
into the soft focus sound world of its own coda seamlessly to
the cinematic, techy strut of Grissette or the calmly
oscillating and cascading melodies of Greencracked which evoke
images of a retro-futurist utopia. Isan have always excelled
at fashioning a quietly awe-inspiring music and Glow... is no
exception. Even the title suggests a sense of wide-eyed-wonder
ôWe were playing with lots of ideas around fire, embers,
bioluminescence and the title popped into my head one day. It
seemed to sum up a lot of the things we like - I like to
imagine sitting in a darkened room looking at the gentle green
glow of 1970s vu meters, then they all come to life and start
crawling up the wallö says Antony. Such is the albumÆs
celestial hot-wired circuit board wizardry; Glow In The Dark
Safari Set positively throbs, ebbs and flows with
electronically refracted ideas and melodies û a digital tone
poem sitting somewhere betwixt the cosy experimentation of the
BBC Radiophonic Workshop and the exotic sonic emissions of a
top secret Dⁿsseldorf studio circa 1975. ôI think we'd like to
see it as a bit of a reset in terms of the Isan canonö
concludes Robin. If thatÆs the case then Isan fans old and new
will be delighted to hear that Glow In The Dark Safari Set
points to a beautiful future. Bask in its brilliance. - Rich
Hanscomb
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01-Channel Ten [04:46]
02-Device [01:42]
03-Merman Sound [07:38]
04-Grisette [03:30]
05-The Axle [04:32]
06-Greencracked [02:19]
07-64 Fire Damage [09:13]
08-Catgot [03:00]
09-Dapperling [04:09]
10-Slurs and Slowly [04:05]
11-East Side V34 [05:32]
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50:26 min