Antenna

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Don't be deluded by the cutesy clap and whistle which opens this debut by Brighton-based self-taught bedroom-anti-boffin Stuart Cullen. And don't get led astray by the Wizard Of Oz sample "Come here, Toto" which immediately follows. Because Pilote has plenty more up his sleeve, even in just this first track 'Turtle', where eerie harps and roughed-up beats build slowly up over a dreamy and diamond-glittering groove. And then, once you think it's all got too comfy - that Pilote is some Aphex Twin pretender with cuddly bits - then he rams you right throught the stratosphere into a screeching and sharp-clawed world which bleeds with raw sound. 'Microphones' is a tuff-edged Nineties' funk journey which melds melancholia effortlessly into the mix. While 'Shit Funk' is an aggressive chunky and frankly brilliant track where synths jab into a rotating double bass riff, while what sounds like castanets crackle all around. Despite the weird-shit electronica, Stuart still manages to make butt-wiggling part of the package. It seems Stuart's bent is to play about with techno's rougher hued sounds at the same time as having a good old laugh with the more organic sounds of 80s synths. By churning them together into a mould where sampled nonsense and explosive off-kilter breakbeats are also part of the recipe, he makes innovative electronica without the effect being at expense of the funk-loving dancefloor fiend. Humour, as with all truly open and uninhibited musicians, is never far away. So while 'National Lottery' is a minimal syncopated rhythm work-out where taut patterns of programmed drums weave a tightly knit weft through which only the smalled melodic strands can weave through, it's in the 10th minute you should listen out for one sole bizarre extra twiddly bit which appears out of nowhere and disappears just as swiftly from whence it came. 'Message from the Bigman' sounds like a religious piece of melancholic organ woozy until the sample of an irate caller asking the person at the other end to "pick up the fucking phone" hits in (which - on first listen - had everybody in the motion office rushing to Simon's ansaphone in haste to calm down what we thought was a real caller... ). And so, Pilote's 'Antenna' picks up everything from phone-messages to snippets of Peter Cook to TV chat shows and broadcasts it with added textural adventures, from burrowing bass-lines through delicate and fluid sonic decorations to the tssk-tssk of dance music's cymbals, for your plural listening delight. Make sure you tune in.

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