It fades in with a beautiful, vintage analog synth wash and bubbles up from there. I'm talking about Minisystem's debut album "Madingley". For fans of the unique sounds of vintage equipment this album is sure to become a favorite...I mean, the opening number (also the title track) continues building until it channels a bit of the keys from The Who's "Baba O'Riley" (aka "Teenage Wasteland").

1. Madingley
2. What About Me?
3. You're Cute
4. Summer t.o.
5. Where Where You?
6. Redwinged Blackbird
7. Cheddar
8. Rockmosa
9. Sand
10. We'll Be OK
11. Insolvent

One thing that always strikes me about work involving old synths is how playful, almost childlike the melodies and sounds are. You can't help but want to grab a Pez TM and a friend TM and go walking off into landscape made of Lego's TM.

Minisystem doesn't delve too far into deeply emotional melodies, preferring to ride along the clean, shiny surface of the electronics. Fans of artists on Skam, City Centre Offices, Warp and others in the genre are certainly going to enjoy the work here. Overall, the similarity in the candy-like melodies that skip across nearly every tracks don't really pull me in, but two tracks standout nicely for me. Those are "Sand" and "Insolvent".

"Sand" comes on with a melancholy way that slowly builds with the addition percussive ticks, and eventually some laid-back snare hits. The synth keys layer one on another and it's this layering where it really starts sounding good. Among the builds are some nice respites that lend strong dimensionality to the sound.

"Inolvent" offers some menacing sweeps alongside slow tempo percussive patterns. Again, maybe it's the melancholy edge it shares with "Sand" but the deep tones in this one give it a depth of emotion that does everything good for it.

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