Not all the 11 tracks on the recent album Hip Hip by Jeff Morton, who records as Nuthre, take the sounds of electronic fidgeting and turn them into something rhythmic and song-like, even a little tuneful, but the two best tracks certainly do. Both “New Concepts at High Frequencies” (MP3) and “A Young Telephone Engineer Named Thomas” (MP3) use the frayed-wire sonics of circuit bending to produce little tunes whose tempo, melodic content, and constituent parts are all equally modest, but which combine for a really enjoyable effect. Also highly recommended is “A Whale of a Time Working Like Crazy at Their Wonderful Year-Round Hobby,” on which the cheap rattle of a toy piano is a welcome addition to the music-making toolbox (MP3).
Get the full release at notype.com and archive.org. More on Morton/Nuthre at nuthre.ca and myspace.com/nuthre.
Oh this is good stuff. It fits nicely into my balance of melodic twee and controlled chaos. Nice way to begin this decade.
Very glad you dug it. The balance of twee and chaos is very much at the heart of this. I love to hear noise wrangled into pop.