Boy Is Fiction – Broadcasts In Colour
Pour myself a glass of scotch, put the disc on and let random thoughts fall out onto the notepad beside me. Thoughts like; ‘why does the Boy Is Fiction official website look like a dating agency?’
Meet people
Find love
Find e-mail addresses
Single dating
New business insurance????
Kudos for the professionalism but it’s all rather sterile, a joyless, sexless place and of course, nothing to do with Boy Is Fiction . His site, I guess, remains under construction hence our being redirected to ‘pretty, bland smiles in suits’ dot com.
Let’s sort the facts from the fiction. Broadcasts In Colour is the second album from the studio-based, Australian (real name Alex Gillett) and the tone is tangibly lighter and more optimistic than his self-titled debut. Yet scratch a little beneath the surface and it becomes clear that self-doubt and introspection remain the lifeblood of Gillett’s work. Broadcasts may pulse like a mechanical heart, but there’s a man inside this machine.
This guys music reminds me somewhat of Near The Parenthesis . His beat-laden tracks are crisp and punchy while his gentle, more reflective pieces tend to twinkle away most agreeably. ‘Your Name On My Skin’ is a fine example in point. Here you have the impression the track is building to one of those ignition climaxes but Gillett chooses instead to keep us gently simmering. The best track by some way is ‘Feeling Lazy’, a chemical dependency struggle more in the vein (no pun) of Maps (thematically) and Epic45 (sonically and vocally).
“I feel like fuckin’ wasting away”
‘Feeling lazy’ is gorgeous yet chilling and only tempered by the sad fact that it is quite atypical of the rest of the album. More of this and I’m fully converted. As it happens the album is sufficiently solid to at least subvert my normal musical tendencies. The closing pair also manage to press my buttons, one an electro Mogwai the other edging toward m83 and Bitcrush .
I’m in need of a refill. How do you take your whiskey by the way? Diluted? Neat? Buried in fizzy cola? I take mine straight up, with a chunk of ice and that’s exactly how Boy Is Fiction likes his IDM. Superior stuff.