Originally going by the name Earwig and released a couple of singles and an album, Kirsty Yates and Julian Serge Tardo changed their collective name and released a rather beguiling album of womb-y electronic chamber pop ('Euphoria') on 4AD offshoot Guernica. Insides' next act was to release a 37-minute, single-track CD that married the motorik, urban night drive of Kraftwerk with the mallet-happy frenzy of Steve Reich.
'Clear Skin' layers synth stabs, strings and warm percussion over a persistent double-track of xylophone. This creates a sense of constant motion and when the guitar comes in it adds a pastoral feel as the repetition causes a certain amount of dislocation and disorientation.
Around the ten-minute mark the guitars move a little more to the fore, gently prog-ing it up until they start bouncing around in infinite loops. They slowly recede again as a section is led by dark strings and burbling, the xylophones throbbing away. The sound parts as an angelic vocal bursts into the track like sun sweeping away rainclouds.
The next section pares the track back to a synthetic version of the xylophone, dubbing up the echoes and adding counter melodies on bells and a chirruping distortion of the main riff. The string melody comes back and leads into a final section that somehow echoes each individual component without causing overload.
Stick the headphones on and the gently shifting textures cause you to lose all track of time. And miss your stop.
Download Insides 'Clear Skin (TRNWRD Edit)' (mp3) (Box.net)
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