Woo ★★★★
Xylophonics + Robot X
INDEPENDENT PROJECTS. CD/LP
Celebration of the veteran British sonic mavericks.
South-west London brothers Clive and Mark Ives have made music since 1972. Their first album appeared in 1982. LA’s Independent Projects picked up on them in 1989, so it’s fitting this lovingly packaged reissue is on an imprint they have history with. 2017’s Xylophonics drew from tapes recorded in the 1990s. 2016’s Robot X reconfigures four-track tapes from the 1980s. Both albums drew from concerns homo sapiens might be supplanted by humanoid robots, and fittingly, what’s heard here fuses the organic with the electronic. Robot X is the more abstract, but each album is emblematic of their fusion of kosmische-leaning electronica, tuned percussion and woodwind instruments: pastoral, exotica-tinged and frequently beautiful. They’re approximate pointers, but Another Green World Eno and the bucolic side of Cluster just about capture it. Wonderful to see the free-spirited Woo treated with due respect by this diligent reissue.