Warm Digits - Wireless World

  by Kimberly Bright

published: 31 / 10 / 2017

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Review

For their newest album 'Wireless World' Warm Digits, Andrew Hodson and Steve Jefferis, recently signed to Memphis Industries, the home of Field Music, SLUG, Menace Beach, and the Go! Team, among many others. This British boutique indie label should inspire the same dedicated acquisition of all of its releases that Motown, Island, and Stax once did, and Warm Digits – based on either side of the Pennines - are a perfect fit for the label. If its song titles ('End Times', 'Deluge and Delusion', 'Victims of Geology', 'The Rumble and the Tremor', 'Swallow the City') didn’t hint at impending disasters, and if the lyrics weren’t in the mold of singer Jonathan Higgs from Everything Everything’s chronicle of a perpetual panic attack, then the album would simply be a collection of incredibly enjoyable techno, psychedelic drone, funk, krautrock, and dreamy ambient tracks. It would be the sort of thing one would expect from Public Service Broadcasting, early Gary Numan, or M83. But the frantic message here, with underlying doomy synths and siren-like guitar riffs, is unavoidable that the world is indeed ending and this is Warm Digits’ apocalyptic dance party, featuring their friends Field Music, Mia La Metta, Sarah Cracknell, and Devon Sproute. The refrain on 'End Times', with Field Music’s Peter Brewis, is, of course, “dance until you drop.” The band’s accompanying statement about the album’s message is, “Our experience of the world and our states of mind are shaped and thrilled by unimaginably exciting leaps in technology, and yet that world will only last for a few moments as we fail to find a way to act collectively on rising temperatures, the failures of democracy and the unstoppable hunger for exploitation of the ground under our feet. This record is our attempt to make music from our experience of this present that teeters between celebration and devastation.” From a musical standpoint 'Two to Four Degrees' and 'Wireless World', like much of the album, could easily be from a dystopian science fiction film soundtrack, especially if the film (or TV show) involved Earth being invaded and menaced by a superior alien species or destroyed by a comet or, as in the case with the closing track 'Swallow the City', a massive tidal wave. The fact, however, that the natural world and civilization alike are crumbling around us is basically our own fault: ecological doom dominates 'Fracking Blackpool', about an actual earthquake in Blackpool caused by exploratory fracking, and 'The Rumble and the Tremor'. The choice of vocalist Devon Sproule in particular adds a poppy sense of harmony to balance out the occasional harshness. Our alienation from nature is further highlighted on 'Growth of Raindrops': “Television, radio, I don’t really know which way to go,” entirely true of a generation who can’t navigate a country road or a city block without a GPS. Despite this pervasive last-days vibe, the songs are energetic, defiantly fun, brilliant, vibrant, and driving. These are friends you want to keep close in a rapidly changing and uncertain world.

Track Listing:-

1 Two to Four Degrees
2 End Times (feat. Field Music)
3 Wireless World
4 Always On
5 Better Friction (feat. Mia La Metta)
6 Victims of Geology
7 Growth of Raindrops (feat. Sarah Cracknell)
8 Deluge and Delusion
9 Fracking Blackpool
10 The Rumble and the Tremor (feat. Devon Sproule)
11 Mute Ocean
12 Swallow the City

Band Links:-

http://warmdigits.co.uk/
https://www.facebook.com/warmdigits/
https://twitter.com/warmdigits
https://www.youtube.com/user/warmdigit

Label Links:-

http://www.memphis-industries.com/
https://www.facebook.com/memphisindust
https://twitter.com/memphisind
https://www.youtube.com/user/mattmemph
https://plus.google.com/+memphisindust