i!

"i!pad" (Album, 2013)

Wait... One Day It Will Make Sense is the fifth song on this mind (and genre)-bending album from this little-known Scottish outfit. It would also have been my choice for the album title instead of the somewhat lame play on words and the band's name that we've got, and which does no justice to such a successfully challenging suite of compositions. But what the band name (BTW, how exactly does one pronounce i!?) and album title do tell us about these two brothers (Gary and Derek Robertson) is that they are not the sort to let their musical ability or intellects get in the way of a bit of playfulness. The occasional vocals are more indie rock than the Bowie they might wish to be, but it isn't often such a resolutely eclectic approach to songwriting pays off so unexpectedly.

This straddles crossover industrial guitar grinding (opening song Metal is an obvious starting point but fails to even hint at treats to come), glitched breakbeats (NMadeS), instrumental electronic soundscapes, and strummed acoustic guitars and hamonised folksy vocals and, somewhat astonishingly, manages to pull each off quite convincingly. How this isn't just a car crash of dismembered audio body parts is slightly beyond me. This can't be a purging of youthful influences as apparently their previous releases have also been as eclectic. Unpredictable originality like this doesn't come around often, and the quality of the overtly electronic instrumentals (Wait... One Day It Will Make Sense, Progress Changes Platform and Behold The Orange Sun) is the main reason we thoroughly recommend downloading. Focusing their energies in developing the general direction found in those three tracks would be my one key piece of advice. The final surprise twist comes in that this is album is FREE to download. Ridiculous. What are you waiting for? 7/10

Rob Dyer (April 2013)