Minotaur Shock: brilliant left-field pop

If Kraftwerk were young and influenced by a wider cultural issues but avant-garde, they’d probably end up making music sounding like Minotaur Shock on the ‘Maritime’ album. Instead of clinical/repressed/robotic sounds it would be all exuberant, lively and playful - as in the chiming, toy-like sounds. ‘Maritime’ is like a pearl you pull outta sea… [And, supplant to ‘Chiff-Chaffs And Willow Warblers’ of 2001 and an EP compilation ‘Rinse’ of 2003.]

Minotaur Shock is David Edwards who has combined a couple of romantic ideas for an album to make you feel like luxuriating in an English garden on a barmy sunny day. One is imagery of pirates and coastline as described by Dame Daphne DuMaurier (1907-1989), and the other love for FM Rock as purveyed by Steely Dan, The Cars, Hall & Oates…

“Hence, if you look hard enough you’ll find nods to The Wedding Present, Prefab Sprout, Can, The Art of Noise, The Eagles, Mr Fingers, Cocteau Twins, Steely Dan, Giorgio Moroder…” Edwards helpfully explains about the 11 tracks featured here.

It could be true and yet - don’t believe but prick your ears to tracks such as ‘(She’s In) Dry Dock Now’, ‘Somebody Once Told Me It Existed But They Never Found It’, ‘Mistaken Tourist’…

Summertime album… and no intoxicating before 5 o’clock. [As long as it is somewhere!]

8/10