Music Arcades: Farmers Manual: Explorers

I first stumbled across Farmers Manual almost literally in the Showroom Bar in Sheffield when they were playing the launch of the Lovebytes Festival in 1998. In some ways that performance captured the essence of Lovebytes in microcosm. They attracted artists and aesthetes from the digital underground to a dysfunctional café bar where people from Creative Communications Agencies were used to enjoying their after-work tipple, and then there was these four Austrian guys with unwashed hair and Apple Powerbooks — and with these Powerbooks they aurally assaulted all and sundry.

It was interesting, but there was no way you could call it pleasure.

I suspect I did my best to blot out the noise at the time, but six months later I guess I read a persuasive review in The Wire, because I ordered this album from cow.co.uk.

I need to have a reason to play this. It's quite fun in its own way, but there's no way you could call it music.

One thing it has in its favour: no essay on the CD booklet. No words at all, in fact. Just a graphic that looks a but like a circuit diagram drawn by someone who's got a ruler, but doesn't feel the need to use it all the time. Rather attractive.