The Chap - "Auto Where To". Fluxblog tipped me to The Chap when Matt posted "Baby I'm Hurtin'", a greasy-haired electropop song with strings and madcap yells. But when Ham arrived, I found an altogether different thing: like the Junior Boys swirled with Datarock, it's cool synths and a clicking dance-track, all chilled and glassy and occasionally pop-a-pill crazy. "Auto Where To" lives at some middle point between the album's extremes. In the centre of the thing, in its twisty tree-trunk middle, there's that guitar-line. It hops and dodges, it navigates alleys in double-time. And it would be nothing without those pop-pop synths. They'd even makes fashion models dance.

There are vocals too, codeine English vocals, mostly nonsense, and then a racket of clipped percussion, buzzy Four Tet noises, and a growing synth threat. The crush of insects that descent on a land, drinks being spilled on the dance-floor, explosions shooting through the drywall, ash everywhere. [buy at Lo Recordings]

---

Micah P Hinson - "The Dream You Left Behind". Okay for me this is a special moment kind of song, where I was just walking along and light glanced out unexpectedly and colours waved and a wind blew at my collar and at the same time this song was playing, gold in my ears, this simple mix of sounds, of noise. It's a drum and a shaker, bamf bamf bamf, a guitar, another guitar, another, and there's Micah's still-grim voice, echoing back on itself, and out of nowhere, out of the moon or up from the ground or kicked up by your boot, it's another guitar and this one comes with bells and sparkle. It's a slight and magnificent counterpoint, straying from the melody's path just enough. All of a sudden this quietloud folk-rock ditty has got a monumental strength, the power to jar the world to the right or to the left, to make light glance out and colours wave and wind blow at collars. Yeah, a special moment kind of song, but maybe you'll have one too. [from Micah's new EP, The Baby and the Satellite. I can only see it at Amazon UK, but go buy!]