Having been fortunate to catch Rodney Cromwell, the nom de plume of regular Happy Robots recording artiste Adam Cresswell, supporting Pram some years ago, I was looking forward to hearing his latest release and was not disappointed. This is his second album and continues his crusade, using ’80s synth sounds to reproduce his own soft, dreamlike world.
There is a sense of tension in the Euro sound of opener “Intercom” which, allied with the robotic voice effect, gives an impending drama to the track. It paints the picture of a tense modernity; a sense of pursuit with the interlaced synths providing dynamism.
The voice processing is a one-off experiment and when Adam’s true voice is revealed, we discover it is an instrument of bruised intimacy; that tired, end of the evening sort of voice that fits nicely with the bouncy optimism of “Opus 3”. It has the kind of feel that New Order had when they finally found their way out of the darkness and the carefully placed synth layers build to a lovely whole.
There are some lovely little instrumental interludes as well, interspersed among the longer pieces; the change of energy that “Butterflies In The Filing Cabinet” produces is marked, while the esoteric experimentation of “The Small Print”, with its typewriter effects, drifts off in another direction. These little departures are just snippets of ideas that feel as though they could easily be fleshed out into something longer; but the effort that goes into producing something that is forty-nine seconds long says a lot about Adam’s attention to detail.
Towards the end of Memory Box, we come across the sort of bedroom esoterica in “The Department Of Public Tranquility” that explains his being on the same bill as Pram, and the Tomorrow’s World vibe of “Wristwatch Television” is classic ’70s bedroom with an irresistible, circular motif that nags at your ear. There is much that is catchy here and it is hard not to find yourself humming along at certain points from the aide memoire of moods that is “Calculations” to the pretty melancholic piano line of closer “The Winter Palace”.It is a lovely concoction that, when set against the whoosh of space streakings, really gives a great finale. Memory Box oozes charm, and although the sounds have a sense of familiarity, the world Adam weaves is very much his own. It is on yellow vinyl too, so you cold do a lot worse than track a copy of this down.
-Mr Olivetti-
