Raffertie - Mass Appeal

Raffertie’s debut for Ninja Tunes, ‘Visual Acuity’, was a giddy and wild-eyed splurge of extreme electronic excitement, sounding rather like a drum machine masturbating underwater – and was all the better for it. The follow-up, ‘Mass Appeal’, is an altogether more stripped back affair, with our cosmic hero easing back on the Nintendo and Coke approach to music making to reveal an altogether more subtle sound.

This doesn’t mean Raffertie has gone soft – the title track is still flooded with sudden flourishes of sonic trickery but he appears to have finally given his tunes some breathing space. ‘One Track Mind’ is straight from the Daniel Miller/Mute/The Normal school of production, ten minutes of blissful keyboard arpeggios culminating in a breathy coda while ‘Courage Boy’ is of similar languid bent, the teasing sub bass weaving in, out and around the minimal percussion and ghostly vocal presences. The only slight misstep is ‘Brevity’, a formless exercise in glitch which only sporadically flickers to life during its four minutes of relative tedium.

Raffertie himself might be a step or two away from genuine mass appeal but he has shown enough musical eclecticism to ensure the potential is there – the key for the Brummie wunderkind is to focus his approach and hone his undoubted flair into a sound all his own.