Newsflash: James Ferraro is very good at both naming and making songs

One of the most interesting people on the underground will release some of the most interesting, and best, music of, and about, the overground.

There’s a fabulous moment on Seinfeld when George meets his perfect woman, who loves balding, unemployed men, and she’s just so perfect he goes a bit batty.

James Ferraro’s new stuff is a bit like that for us. He’s an artist (like a proper artist artist, we’ve heard stories about him writing down the plots from video games for inspiration even though he doesn’t even own a phone) that does ludicrous things like make 10 albums of total immersion channel skipping h-pop a year and perform with a bunch of guys themed around 1980s TV streetpunks waving spraypaint and wailing feedback. So, yeah, we’re interested. Then Hippos In Tanks send through his new EP, to be released in September and it channels Steve Reich’s minimal, phasing majesty (and that’s only a bit of an overstatement), Andy Warhol’s pop art and music from airplane adverts.

There’s been lots of music around from the American synth/art underground that overtly feeds off mainstream culture, from Oneohtrix’s echo jams to Ariel Pink’s stadium rock, but but this EP is quite blinding in its sheer melodic punch, super-sized production values, affection and ambition. It’s just delicious.

Anyway, I’m getting a bit carried away, but that’s because I’ve just heard one of my favourite EPs of the year, ‘Condo Pets’ by James Ferraro, which Hippos will release ahead of the album Here’s the tracklisting (note the un-impeachable name for #6), together with the release notes below.

1. Text Bubbles
2. The Secret World Of Condo Pets
3. Eco – Tot
4. Life In A Day
5. Smoothies , Foodies , Flat Screens And Virtuality
6. Find Out What’s On Carrie Bradshaw’s iPod
7. Saint Prius

Text Bubbles,coffee,condo life,the modern house pet and beyond.

Condo Pets is a musical mirror of our virtual 21st century cultural landscape of fusion and consumption. A futuristic symphonic prelude to Far Side Virtual.

Track 4 Life In A Day imagines a melodic score to a google map street view tour of Dubai.Smoothies,Foodies,Flat Screens And Virtuality paints a map of an augmented digital suburban metropolis , a minimal symphony to the hyper reality of our domestic lives.While track 6 Find Out What’s On Carrie Bradshaw’s iPod ask us to ponder our identity as media molded global citizens of a simulacra city.

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