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This Boston-founded, Brooklyn-based ‘avant-pop’ collective formed a decade ago and have since individually collaborated with artistically inclined performers from Amanda Palmer to Beyoncé, but they’ve gravitated back together for a fifth album that suggests that they still fare just as well when pooling their creative resources.
The jittery beats of Spinning and the giddy three-legged drift of The First Hippie On The Moon Pt. 1 will surely intrigue prog heads, electronica geeks and art pop fans alike, and there’s a subtle thread of emotive vocal icing the cake. They’ve also got an undeniable sensuality about their sound – Slow Rider has a slow, slinky groove driven by a fat bass synth sound, and Kristin Slipp’s woozy vocals only intoxicate further, as if a hypnotic, unorthodox beat is gently pulling you out of reality into Cuddle Magic’s alternate universe where everything is just a little bit… warped. Recent single Trojan Horse is said to be inspired by the music and culture of northwest Ghana, but since these ears have very limited knowledge of the West African arts scene, it simply resembles another trippy, gossamer-soft passage of melancholic synth pop with the wheels removed and stuck back on the opposite way. And what’s so wrong with that?
