Royal Astronomy

ROYAL ASTRONOMY is, by a yawning margin, the most peculiar record I've heard in ages: a totally insane amalgam of jaunty orchestral passages, mashed-up breakbeats, lounge kitsch and synthesiser abuse. It's as cheesy as fuck, it's utterly deranged, and it's absolutely brilliant.

m-Ziq (pronounced "Mu-ziq") consists of 24-year-old Mike Paradinas – a studio-domiciled boffin who is, like Aphex Twin and Luke "Wagon Christ" Vibert, a mainstay of the post-rave experimental fringe. Paradinas has much common ground with Vibert, in that he pilfers from the naffest records he can find (E-Z listening cocktail music, 1970s MOR pop records, slivers of slap-bass from jazz-fusion albums) and alchemises them into pure sampladelic gold.

'The Hwicci Song' sees an almost militaristic brass-band melody set to a backdrop of furious hip hop turntable-scratching, while waves of Moog synthesiser drift serenely by in the rear of the mix. It calls to mind a Toy Story-esque image of legions of action-figure soldiers advancing across a miniature battleground. 'Slice', a similarly disorientating track, could be trip-hop, but for the incredibly hyper breakbeat, the chiming church bells and the gloriously garbled snatches of wibbly synth.

The Aphex influence is most glaring on 'Mentim', a relatively formulaic track which closely resembles one of Richard James' reverb-drenched ambient noir creations. 'Scaling' is all serrated shreds of raw violin collapsing atop one another; 'The Motorbike Track' displays the squelchiest acid-bass sound since prime Joey Beltram; 'Gruber's Mandolin' features no such instrument, thank God, but instead comes on like the Psycho soundtrack re-made/re-modelled for the millennium.

Even when Paradinas plays a relatively straight bat, as he does on the "proper song"-oriented textures of 'The Fear' and the wigged-out drum & bass of 'Carpet Muncher' (!), there are still strange little new melodic twists and squiggles to be found all over the place.

Paradinas is surely one of the most inspired melodicists to emerge in the last few years, and Royal Astronomy is wonderfully daft stuff.