Album Review: Standish/Carlyon - Deleted Scenes

While most musically-inclined brats of the late '70s were switching off everything but punk, a few young musical nerds were getting turned on by Steely Dan's Aja (1977). In Aja they heard a most magnificent, polished production that somehow did not stifle the artist. They heard the future of digital soul.

Those nerds soaked up the post-punk and electro pop influences around them and combined it with Aja-style production prowess they obsessed over. What developed was a small coterie of bands crossing post-punk sensibilities with obsessive compulsive production. China Crisis, Prefab Sprout and Scritti Politti were lauded by the old school music press and hip kids alike. Japan, Aztec Camera and The Blue Nile all dabbled and soon bombastic production ruled the charts and we got to hear Paul Young crooning Love Will Tear Us Apart.

A couple of decades, and an ironic yacht rock revival, later and a new generation of post-some-all-encompassing-lifestyle-changing-sound is bringing SteelyBack.

Standish/Carlyon's Deleted Scenes is where it starts (to make sense) again. Deleted Scenes contains moments of sheer beauty. There are arrangements that have been lovingly drawn out in the recording process – nurtured and then given space to develop. These songs - Nono/Yoyo, Critics Multiply, Gucci Mountain – are the dream pop compositions that ad agency-commissioned Brooklynites would surrender their moustaches/modelling contracts for.

The luxuriant air lingers even amidst more abrasive experimentations (Industrial Resort, 2 5 1 1) and, then, during the dour electronics of Subliminally, S/C recall The Reels – great Australians who successfully melded art, soul, electronics, production sheen… and commerce. Could the wider world accept the elegant bass, wispy keys, stylish percussion and romantic murmurings of the perfectly-produced 5:51 that is Moves, Moves?