My Autumn Empire – The Village Compass – W&W – W&W006 - ***

Don't consign 'folktronica' to the dustbin or dead genres yet. My Autumn Empire, the solo project of Benjamin Thomas of the Staffordshire outfit Epic45, is more song-writerly than its atmospherically Arcadian parent group, but on Block Colours And Straight Lines, for example, the tuneful vocals and deferential melodies are set back in a dense thicket of pastoral tones, stifled breakbeats, and childhood surface noise.
BBC Telford is a set of unresolved acoustic guitar suggestions and eardrum-buzzing drones, made quietly magnificent by the obdurately banal title that crowns them. The six minute Hatchlings, copper strings clanging on cold electronics, unfurls like a tasteful springtime TV ident.

(16/1/11)