Mum - Early Birds (CD, Double vinyl LP)

It’s a shame there’s two grimacing fuck-tards from Leeds City Council digging a hole in the road just outside my window, it would have been nice to sit here in peace and ponder the merits and pitfalls of this unexpected comp from our fave Icelandic pop pixies. Instead it sounds like The New Blockaders are in one channel, DIY twinkly bedroom jungletronica in the other. Considering I’m a massive fan of the glory days of drum and bass and I like melodic electronica,  this tune is actually too wistful and naive for me, it comes bookended by hazy samples of a woman speaking that seem to conjure up fake images of a boarding school I never went to or a library I never actually visited. Yeah so this is Mum’s early pre-Millennial output from around the era of “Today is probably gonna be OK even though I’ve already forgotten my sandwiches and stubbed my toe on a daisy”

There’s loads of cute moomin synths, edits of obscure dialogue, twinklesome melodies and lopsided amateur beatery on this CD, a couple  of tunes being more early Global Goon inspired than owt else say, ‘Gingurt’ for example. I’m finding  stacks of playful pissing around and charming scrappy gems throughout ‘Early Birds’ with them making a kind of laid-back but gleeful pastoral downtempo electronica that in places hasn’t dated too well, like it’s too scared to develop into something more than amiable - I want a lump in my throat goddammit! In other parts though  the exploratory work is quite adorable or at the very least totally unlike their later material. Track six (I’m not attempting to spell them…..) is particularly alarming ending up sounding like early Ratatat crossing swords with Hungarian electro thrash-pop loons Agaskodo Teliverik ! Tres demented indeed.  So no real ethereal fragility over the course of fifteen pieces  but with lots of Baby Rephlex-like melodies, some wonky accordion and pooting glitchy beats , if you like their first album you’ll no doubt love this, I think a lot of tracks here are totally rare-as-fuck so it’ll save you 100s buying the originals!! Features in a digipak with a colourful booklet with a brief potted history of each track devoted to each page, all lovingly released by Sir Thomas of Morrshire