Flying Wonders Wobbly Jack EP by Homelife (CD EP)

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You know those slow Sunday afternoons when loads of mates end up round your place and you spend ages going through your record collection saying "listen to this one!" and "have you heard this one?" and "here's one I haven't played for years" and "I thought this one was crap for ages but I've only just realised it's brilliant". Well, Homelife sound pretty much like that, only with all the records being played at once. Homelife, apparently, aren't a band so much as Paddy Steer and his mates from around Manchester and the world at large who occasionally go to Paddy's to hang out.
There's both that sense of ease that the musicians play together with (even though - astonishingly - some of the musicians apparently have never even met each other) as well as this incredible range of influences and sounds going on in each track. Main track "Flying Wonders" has a heavy bottom end with Latin sounding percussion winding around a pumping double bass with some exquisitely-plucked jazz guitar and swirling strings mooching their way through it all. "Wobbly Jack" prominently features Graham Massey's bass clarinet, the gravity-defying vocals of Seaming To (who manages to sound like a human theremin) and some Bollywood strings that explode like technicolour into the low-key proceedings. "Fruit Machine" again features Seaming To over some incredibly tricksy electronic beats and clunks and pizzicato strings. "Eleven Till Seven" is the incidental music for the kind of comedy spy caper that's on the telly with the sound turned down on the Sunday afternoon you spend listening to records.
If this is life chez Steer, I'm glad he doesn't go out much.