Smashed Toy - Tangents

Hear The Track Here

Smashed Toy is yet another old name to return to Soundclick activity lately, and another welcome return it is too. A few years ago Smashed Toy (along with Ad Fielding, Stompp, Fahrenheit 451, dcallen and others) were the Soundclick electronica scene and it was a source of some great tracks. Going back through my reviews of 2004 and 2005 I find that Smashed Toy and I weren't exactly happy together until he came up with Way Back When that it started to click for me. The last review of Smashed Toy I did was part of the Sinewinder 2 CD (October 2006); an excellent representation of what Soundlcick's electronica sounded back then.

Like ALL of the artists I've mentioned Smashed Toy has been very quiet for at least a couple of years, so what gives exactly? Did they all go on holiday together - at the same time? Enquiring minds want to know. Actually, on second thoughts, it may be best not to know that. As I mentioned in pretty much all those previous reviews, Smashed Toy's electronica is usually of the darker, edgier variety and Tangents is no stranger to that rule. This is a very dense track in more ways than one, but well worth it especially if you like electronica with muscles.

Despite its Electronica: Triphop labelling, Tangents goes a lot deeper to cover the almost eight minutes of running time, so its a sure bet that you'll find much, much more than a few bleeps here and there. As I say, if anyone sane had to listen to 8 minutes of 4 to the floor bleepery, they wouldn't be sane for long. Where this track scores is its willingness to experiment (especially with textures and tones) and it's brick-wall-in-the-face production. I admit I don't really have that much of a taste for electronic epics generally, this this is worth making some room for.

Intelligent, experimental electronica. Highly Recommended.