AnD Cosmic Microwave Background

“In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown. And, in between, there are doors.” Having honed a clear and uncompromising sound, which has been flexed across all manner of tempos, AnD return to Electric Deluxe with their first full body of work: a sonic contemplation of the cosmos, woven with all their industrial tropes in tact. The venomous hats and cavernous rumblings on “Power Spectrum", the caustic squeals of “Acoustic Oscillations” and the anxious pistons in “Gravitational Waves", for example, should instantly resonate with fans of the duo’s wanton dancefloor works. But another cataclysmic compilation this is not. ‘Cosmic Microwave Background’ is a far more composed and calculated affair, which sees the AnD sound assiduously recast into long-player format. The analogue bleeps of “Particle” and grainy textures in “The Epoch of Recombination” are some of the fluctuations that temper AnD’s debut album into a solid listening experience, meanwhile exposing some of the pair’s fluid and intuitive working process-with themselves as much as with their machines. Juxtaposing production precision with more freeform composition, ‘Cosmic Microwave Background’ as an opus is as intriguing and unexpected in its entirety as it’s individual parts-for the vinyl collectors, reordered here into a double LP of functional floor material and more experimental pieces.