Having now left the mothership that was Belle & Sebastian, Stuart David has created, with wife Karn and the rest of Looper, his own Kubrickian ‘cyberspacestation’, the Geometrid – an album and a concept, all thematically centred on visions of the future, and technology’s effect on our lives. With its cheap, simplistic Casio riff and glib Bontempi beats, the lo-fi new single ‘Mondo 77’ is a suitable but rather passionless opening number for this audio experiment. But then we drift into warmer territory with the gorgeous, jangly ‘On The Flipside’, the witty narrative, ‘Modem Song’, that samples the bip-bip-dee-dong-dee-dong sound of a computer hooking up to the Internet, and the wistful, guitar and flute-led ‘These Things’.
By now you realise ‘The Geometrid’ is an eminently listenable, electronic pop record, with much to cheer both gentle Jeepsterphiles and dance music aficionados alike – lyrics about the moon and drinking lemonade, Stuart’s wry prose and his unmistakable Glaswegian burr, teamed with more toe-twitching grooves than any indie band has the right to lay their hands on. Karn takes on more vocal duties than she has done before – and in the process proves that a female dance music vocalist needn’t necessarily be a wailing old slapper with her dress falling off. God bless Stuart and Karn – the Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore of Camberwick Green.
