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Two electronic artists with solid reputations on the Berlin scene, Hans Moller and Michael Zorn are Boy Robot. Together they've produced a 10 track album of near pitch-perfect electro-pop, with restless limbs and an ever-aching heart. Opener 'Like Silly And Waterful' smartly sets the pace, where clattering drum-thuds and chattering synth-chimes come on like Boards Of Canada with overly-active vitamin implants. Yet no matter how much that percussion staggers into life and those beats itch to dance, it's the scent of melancholy setting across the thing which truly makes it tick.
Again it's a mist that seemingly descends into electronica from shoegazing, as witnessed on Morr's seminal 2002 Slowdive-inspired 'Blue Skied An' Clear' compilation. So while the twitching jabbers of 'Old Habits Die Hard' fight to step out into the light, the glowing embers of immediate successor 'The Last Dance' firmly retreat back into those shadows. And so it continues. Then the seedy washes of 'Set It For Me' â?? complete with Barrington Bisumber's reggae-tinged slur â?? smartly blurs the atmosphere again. It's that uncertainty, that makes this such a certainty.

Ian Fletcher
CWAS #13 - Autumn 2003

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