- Label: 'Bureau B Records'
- Genre: 'Pop'
- Release Date: '9th April 2012'- Catalogue No: 'BB99'
Our Rating:
Junior Electronics is the pseudonym of Joe Watson, Stereolab's keyboardist and engineer and producer of The High Llamas.
If the stage name makes you think of a kid's science kit, then you'd be on the right wavelength for an artist whose approach to the record studio is both playful and experimental.
This is his second solo work and is described as a collection of musical mesostics. A mesostic is a typographical layout where a vertical text intersects with horizontal lines (as can be seen in the text on the album cover and track listing).
In musical terms it's a form which John Cage experimented with as a device for making language as interesting as music. Cage most famously deployed the technique for a piece for unaccompanied voice entitled Sixty-Two Mesostics Re Merce Cunningham composed in 1971.
Watson's nine tunes are less challenging and more lounge orientated but nevertheless revel in the same degree of complexity and chance.
Watson boasts of the use of only analogue instruments on the record which means that you must assume that the cheesy synthesizer you hear on Zero Distress is deliberate.
He has a fairly characterless voice so the additional vocals of Mary Hampton and Isidore Guild are welcome.
The general breezy mood at times reminded me of the jazzy Francophile pop of San Tropez on Pink Floyd's Meddle particularly on the track Fire Island Sand.
These are songs which cry out for a lyric sheet but this was absent from my review copy. It actually works better with visuals as you can see in the clever video for the track Mike McConnell where cut and paste lines like "intelligence advisory, never accept change willingly" can be seen as well as heard.
The album has the feel of a private project and, overall, Watson is working towards the kind of leftfield pop record you might expect from Jim O'Rourke or Eno.
It's bright, busy and not unpleasant but there's also an innate aloofness which makes it hard to engage with emotionally.
