Album: Beats for Beginners

Don't Fly into the Sun, FAITH & HOPE

Hailing from Whitby via Manchester, Beats For Beginners are a contemporary electropop combo who employ a lightness of touch akin to Gallic noodlers Air. Their subject matter and reference points are quintessentially British, however, whether it's the girl glimpsed in "Summer Lovers" who's "just like Julie Christie, straight out of my dreams", or the Buggles principle quoted in the single, the infuriatingly catchy "Technology". Along with the cybernetic-breakdown song "When Robots Attack", this track represents the clearest expression of one of the album's dominant interests, jokily musing upon the assumptions of technological development. The other main theme of Don't Fly into the Sun is celebrity culture, dealt with in songs such as "Kill All DJs" and "Death of a C-List Celebrity". The concerns seem related: on the one hand, machines are becoming more lifelike, while on the other, fame renders humans more inanimate and mechanistic. Mercifully, frontman Mike TV's jauntily post-modern take on mo

Hailing from Whitby via Manchester, Beats For Beginners are a contemporary electropop combo who employ a lightness of touch akin to Gallic noodlers Air. Their subject matter and reference points are quintessentially British, however, whether it's the girl glimpsed in "Summer Lovers" who's "just like Julie Christie, straight out of my dreams", or the Buggles principle quoted in the single, the infuriatingly catchy "Technology". Along with the cybernetic-breakdown song "When Robots Attack", this track represents the clearest expression of one of the album's dominant interests, jokily musing upon the assumptions of technological development. The other main theme of Don't Fly into the Sun is celebrity culture, dealt with in songs such as "Kill All DJs" and "Death of a C-List Celebrity". The concerns seem related: on the one hand, machines are becoming more lifelike, while on the other, fame renders humans more inanimate and mechanistic. Mercifully, frontman Mike TV's jauntily post-modern take on modern life allows for a decent range of retro musical influences, from The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Elton and ELO to Eighties electropop. They're like the UK's own Scissor Sisters, imbued with a typically British wry humour.