Folk Off - New Folk And Psychedelia From The British Isles And North America



Magnetophone are Birmingham natives Matt Huish Saunders and John Hanson. Friends since childhood, as boys they would often be found under water, weighed down by bricks and playing Stylophones. Displaying a gift for linguistic manipulation which has continued to sustain their career, they named this ritual the Alpha Beti Bon-Tempi Underwater Electro-Hydro Sound-Fusion. Matt and John's first vinyl appearance, You Should Write Music, was on the Earworm label. They then embarked on a summer tour of caravan parks, during which the Static Brothers witnessed the live favourite Air Methods, and asked the band to record this for their Static Caravan label. This was followed by a 12 EP, Temporary Lid, was warmly received by NME. The duo then signed to 4AD, recording a Peel studio session in spring 2000. They also played live on a Peel show as the opening act of the BBC's Music Live 2000 festival, appearing alongside Plone and Broadcast. Matt and John then completed work on their debut album, I Guess Sometimes I Need To Be Reminded Of How Much You Love Me, the titles for which were conjured with a bag of scrabble tiles and a ouija board. Magnetophone returned in 2005 with The Man Who Ate The Man, which finds them flirting with song structure while spinning webs of dreamily captivating texture. The album runs the gamut from sprawling psychedelia to the sweetest of melancholy snippets, aided by an impressive array of collaborators. Breeders sisters Kim and Kelley Deal and alt-folk troubadour PG Six represent underground America, while the Fence collective's HMS Ginafore and King Creosote contribute skeins of Caledonian melody. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.