Cementing his cult reputation in electronic music circles, former Ultravox frontman turned post-punk synth-pop pioneer Dennis Leigh has refreshed his creative muse with consistently excellent work in recent years.
His third album with The Maths, a fluid collective of collaborators including electronica artist Benge and “space violin” player Hannah Peel, is a richly layered mix of analogue and digital, vintage cyber-pop tropes and contemporary techno textures. While chilly monochrome paranoia-scapes like My Town almost sound like Foxx spoofing his alienated younger self, more bleepy tracks like Personal Magnetism and Changelings acknowledge the warm-blooded hedonism of modern machine music.
The mesmerising monologue Talk (Beneath Your Dream) feels like vintage Laurie Anderson, the gorgeous retro-futurist ballad A Falling Star could be prime-time Roxy Music, while the whooshing sci-fi remake of Pink Floyd’s Have A Cigar is an improvement on the original. Lush and romantic, Evidence is the kind of timeless electronic album you can dream inside.
