winduptoys ‘Double Exposure’, the critics’ view…
Cyclic Defrost:
Melbourne’s analogue addicts, Robert Boehm and Jeremy Smith, are hell bent on conserving the art of producing with hardware for their Winduptoys outfit. Self confessed gadget junkies, they play with all manner of things, even incorporating accidental technologies to create their highly layered, thick sounds.
There appears to be three main sonic bents explored on the album; resonant electronica dub reminiscent of some of the Round Trip Mars stuff out of New Zealand, broken electro shuffle signals on the Fingathing tip, and sonic scapes with IDM punctuation. It is clear that much love and care went into creating and layering the sounds, which gives the album depth. Many of the tracks are built on a solid ‘jam’ approach to music writing, and as such are rarely songs but more often than not, become sonic journeys.
The radio single, ‘Switch On’, is a beautifully distinctive piece, which has immense appeal and is as catchy as hell. It is refreshing to see a release that takes the music making process seriously, but still manages to achieve a delightfully musical result. Although the album is varied and shifts mood and energy throughout, it hangs together beautifully and has the potential to become a jewel in Australia’s electronic crown.
Bec Paton
InPress:
If you’re expecting straight up electro dub, you’re in the wrong place because local duo Winduptoys love to tangent, to establish their heavily reverbed beats and skittering electronics and then disappear into some strange electronic sound scape territory. Of course they eventually return to the groove, and when they do it’s with a euphoric intensity. Maybe it’s because they are proudly adverse to midi and soft synths, the textures of these electronics, seem somewhat grander, crunchier, squelchier, more tactile than everything else around. These are synthesized and electronic sounds that you can taste. And its clear that a lot of care has gone into crafting these larger than life bubbles, skips, basslines, these strange synthesized fragments of sound that somehow remain chilled out, yet quite busy careering energetically around the space. In fact it’s quite dense, a cavalcade of electronics falling onto a smooth groove and those repetitive bangin beats. Yet there’s also plenty of live instruments incorporating flutes. Glockenspiel, and tablas. They cover PIL’s the suit, providing perhaps one of the most hypnotically violent moments on Double Exposure and also team up with Psyburbia and Koshowko. It’s a dense hypnotic world, part experimental, part dub, all encompassing.
Bob Baker Fish
3D World:
Melbourne electro-dub duo Winduptoys have already made appearances on Clan Analogue’s Doppler Shift and In Version compilations, and this debut full-length Double Exposure shows them fusing their passion for gadgets and glitchy contorted electronics with a deep echo-chamber sensibility. While first single Switch On certainly showcases the duo’s adept grasp of swaggering roots-dub elements, vaguely Middle Eastern instrumentation and vocoders riding an ebbing flow of vast sub-bass, there’s certainly plenty of hard-edged rhythmic attack on display here, as in the case of growling near-industrial electro offering Lost and Found. Fellow Melburnites Psyburbia also make a collaborative appearance here on sprawling album centrepiece DUB On Mars!, which winds spectral treated synths around an atmospheric backdrop of deep dub bass and ringing metallic textures worthy of the Mad Professor. Perhaps the most unexpected moment here though comes in the form of a cover of PIL’s The Suit that strips things right back to just doomy synthetic bass and harsh, clanging industrial beats, scattered and cut-up vocals chattering back and forth like some ghost trapped inside a machine. A strong debut from Winduptoys that certainly contains its fair share of lurking jagged edges.
Evilchris
inthemix.com.au:
Boasting electronic production without the use of computers, Double Exposure is analogue purism embodying the do-it-yourself clan philosophy. Staying true to this form, the dub aesthetic characterising winduptoys’ sound is created using old school dub studio mechanics and sees the duo employ electronic devices such as diodes, filters, oscillators, feedback loops and tape machines. But, they don’t just limited themselves to electronic devices, winduptoys sample and play any object they can extract sound from really and this may be anything from toys to kitchen appliances; “accidental technology” which offers a distinct psychedelic element to their dub grooves.
And this certainly makes for some interesting sound bytes and great material for a “guess that sound” pop quizz – bubbles being blown underwater…the twang of the common household rubber band… Some of the tracks are very sparse and heavily defined by this more experimental electronica. The closing track, OFF, for instance, has the atmosphere of an electronic marshland in mating season with the static hum and drone of circuitry replacing the call and response of the natural world. But, while there are plenty of experimental samples and some fairly unconventional songs, most of the album is driven by very consistent and coherent beats predominantly of the dub persuasion. The track titles are often very telling of the extent to which the dub groove permeates the production. windupDUB is, not surprisingly, conquered by the down beat while DUB on Mars! is spaced out, intergalactic dub; ghostDUB, on the other hand, is ambient glitchy dub with inter dimensional reverb.
Besides the dub and glitch electronics, there is another reoccurring element permeating winduptoys’ sound and that is a very hypnotic Middle Eastern flavour. On tracks like windupDUB and switch on, this sound is as overpowering as the harmony of a snake charmer. Generally speaking, the interplay between the more traditional instrumental samples and the experimental electronica is used very effectively. For example, the hammer dulcimer on point of no return is a really grounding element in an otherwise trippy soundscape while the flute further softens the already quiet zzzzz.
While analogue production can be an imaginative alternative to laptop production, regardless, there is no direct relationship to ingenuity. Similar sounds have and can be achieved on both and in both arenas the creators are limited only by their imagination and their ability to knit together all the different audio threads. Double Exposure sounds like a couple of tweakers and bangers holed up in a room completely absorbed in a microcosm of psychedelic dub mania. The analogue production style obviously fits them well and the duo offer both beats for a trippy dance floor as well as more chill out material. It is an interesting listen.
Kat Keefe
Sydney Morning Herald:
The music on this seriously impressive debut from Melbourne’s Winduptoys sounds as though it has come out of a beautiful echo chamber. Slow-motion basslines and delay-heavy drums merge with more eclectic electronic noodlings. Windup Dub has deep dub grooves offset by music-box melodies and other toy-like sounds. The Suit and Ghostdub feature techno beats and and eerie space station sounds, surrounded by warm electronic fuzz. four stars out of five.
Chloe Sasson
Beat Magazine:
Winduptoys really know how to string it together. Lost And Found is not entirely non-reminiscent of Herbie Hancock’s RockIt. WindupDUB has this Arabic, painted-mural-on-a-café-wall kind of aspect that the trebly reggae beat does not dispel. Switched On has a similarly wild Muslim feel, which has to be embraced. Other tracks take a really revolutionary un-bassy but furious, heady approach, suggesting that these are not just a couple of guys probing around with jacks and units, but actual thinkers making thoughtful and, well, atmospheric somewhat druggy music that would have gone down really well in that scene in the film Dalmas where the cops bust the trippy club.
Sometimes the psychedelia buttons get stuck and the guys are just there, in their pyjamas, eating Angas Park dried fruit salad and constantly probing their ears with their pinkies because they hear this whining noise. And at the same time you can see the most definite trails back to rock - Public Image (who they cover) style rock – or the Pop Group who have always been a personal favourite of mine, or back further to blues workouts from the 60s, or The Twilights or whatever. Absolutely highly recommended, my friends.
David Nichols
Inthemix.com.au:
Australian electro / dub duo Robert Boehm and Jeremy Smith (aka Winduptoys) have previously contributed tracks to Clan Analogues recent Doppler Shift and In: Version compilation releases, and this download-only single Switch On offers a preview of their upcoming debut artist album Double Exposure, expected sometime during June through Clan Analogue / Creative Vibes.
In its original album and radio edited forms, Switch On offers up a swaggering slice of cavernous digi-dub, heavily-vocoded intonations sliding through the deep and detailed mix like synthetic ghosts as icy downtempo beats ricochet back and forth around ragga-tinged keys, spectral Indian orchestration and vast crashing metallic textures in a compelling and headnod-inducing blend that sits somewhere between Pole and Deepchild. Robert Boehm slides into his parallel Koshowko persona for an alternate reworking of Switch On that layers dubbed-out jazzy keys over a Mo Wax-esque clattering backbone of big-beat drum breaks while stretching some gorgeously smoky-sounding muted trumpets over a wandering hiphop bassline in my personal favourite of the five tracks on offer here, while the Exotica mix of WindupDUB threads a ghostly-sounding female voice repeatedly intoning “we are all winduptoys” through a lush, spectral backing of slow tribal tabla rhythms, elastic-sounding digitally manipulated beat programming and eerie, snakelike Middle Eastern snakecharmer flutes in a moment that wouldnt sound out of place on the ~scape label. Lastly, the original version of Windup! also offers a final brief closing snippet to round off this single release, distorted samples of a womans eerily disembodied voice being wound up and back down through all manner of strange pitchshifting and processing, before things finally fade out into the distance.
An excellent first offering from Winduptoys that certainly whets the appetite for their upcoming full-length Double Exposure album dont forget to check out the websites below to find out how you can download these tracks.
EvilChris
