Beginning in summer 2003 as a one-off commission for audio weblog Muted Tones (from which opening track “Something” is excerpted and re-edited), this debut record is the result of two years of intermittent collaboration between Toronto’s Sandro Perri (Polmo Polpo, Continuous Dick) and Craig Dunsmuir (Guitarkestra). Produced by Perri with Dunsmuir and written by Dunsmuir with Perri, this five-song full-length circles at the intersection of pop song and extended dub, cribbed lyric and wordless chant, odd meter and straight beat. Playful nods to dance music’s misfit past both direct (the use of chanted quotes from Model 500 and Talking Heads) and secondhand (“Analogue Shantytown”‘s debt to Arthur Russell and Walter Gibbons) are kept in check by Dunsmuir and Perri’s respective rhythmic and timbral acuities, ensuring that this is no mere exercise in exorcism. The paper-and-glue collage of the album’s cover art suitably riffs on a glossy West End disco jacket of a quarter-century ago, rendering it instead as DIY bedroom cut-and-paste. The music within perfectly reflects this aesthetic: an exuberant home-studio celebration of airbrushed, pastel-coloured 80s dance music, with an emphasis on the trancey, guitar-driven, afrobeat- and dub-inflected strains of said era.  

LP is pressed on 180g audiophile vinyl and comes in a thick printed jacket with 12"x12" credit insert. 

CD comes in a custom paperboard mini-gatefold jacket with a printed CD dust sleeve.

 

Craig Dunsmuir: various instruments
Sandro Perri: various instruments


Recorded in various locations and mixed at the Honey Pot in Toronto by Sandro Perri with Craig Dunsmuir.
Mastered at Grey Market in Montreal by Harris Newman.