PITS009 - Wax Stag - Wax Stag

Rob Lee is an adaptable young man. He plays bass and percussion for Friendly Fires, drums for Warp legend Chris Clark, and cuts out shapes from sheets of coloured card for his gorgeous sleeve designs. Sometimes, under the name Wax Stag, he makes glistening leftfield pop using synthesizers and lots of imagination.

The debut 10", 'Short Road EP', was a favourite with everyone from Hot Chip and MTV2 to clued up bloggers and more adventurous disc jockeys, and this, his eponymously titled debut album, carries on where 'Short Road' left off, only more so.

'Short Road' begins proceedings here, opening the doors of the sonic wardrobe out onto a sparkling, woozy little world of instrumental narratives, one built from roughly the same materials throughout - chiming synths , fizzing, popping machine rhythms, tumbling bass lines and swooping pads - but with a wide eyed spread of moods and emotions drifting out of each lead line, each wordless song.

From the relative dissonance and uptempo energy of 'Descant', to the wistful 'Fantasy Gay'; the pastoral, analogue psychedelia of 'Glenferrie' to the exultant chords and skittering 909 claps of 'The Wash', 'Wax Stag' runs on towering slabs of rolling melodies and shimmering arpeggios - it's exhultant and introspective, full of lysergic lullabies and themes from a benevolent future.

Hot Chip described Short Road as "an emotional and exhuberant electronic fanfare", and that works across the board for this, the debut album from one of the more interesting musicians to have emerged from the brave new world of indie/dance in the last couple of years.

01 Short Road
02 And How
03 Folk Rock
04 Descant
05 Gold Gold
06 Fantasy Gay
07 Mirror Lantern
08 Glenferrie
09 The Wash
10 Leith
11 George White
12 Sson


Release Date: 29 September 2008