|   Five Score Six Bicycle is the third album proper from the Canadian electronic duo Vote Robot, and continues in their particular vein of warm and hazy homemade electronic sounds. Melodies bubble up through the murk and recede, bits of static crackle and flare, and warm tones ooze out through the speakers, enveloping the listener’s ears. The music is abstract, but almost melancholic, like the gears of an old rusted-out clock tower slowly decaying or a broken wind-up toy that's been set in motion one last time. There's a definitely air of familiarity here, too: these sounds and melodies seem to have existed at some point in the past, now long-buried in the clutter of the subconscious. On Five Score, Vote Robot continues their experimentations with sound minutiae and equipment deconstruction/reconfiguration. The sounds here are gathered from all manner of sources: cut-up and painstakingly spliced magnetic tape, random bits of static, hand-cut records made with any available pieces of plastic, heat-tested cassette tapes run through 3 consecutive 1/4" reel machines, snippets of previous Vote Robot records played on a modified turntable, and just about anything else imaginable. Thus while a cursory listen might suggest that their music fits in with so-called "glitch" movement, Vote Robot's music shows a depth, ingenuity, and humanity that would be almost unattainable if it were made on a computer. Edition of 300 Copies, in a beautiful — approaching photographic even — four-color silk-screened sleeve by Vote Robot themselves. |
