Album: Ratatat, LP3 (XL)

For their third album, New York techno duo Ratatat (guitarist Mike Stroud and keyboardist Evan Mast) decamped to the Old Soul Studio of their friend White Flight, up in the Catskills, where they found a trove of old analogue keyboards that provide many of the textures and timbres of LP3.

Recorded in a few weeks, compared to the months expended on previous releases, these instrumental pieces have an immediacy akin to musical speed-painting, the ideas captured with the minimum of procrastination and over-complication, whether it’s the two-way autoharp (forwards and reversed) of “Falcom Jab”, the mellotron and brittle percussion of “Mirando”, or the swoony guitar sounds of “Bird-Priest”.

Best of all is the opener, “Shiller”, a delicate web of organ and harpsichord interlaced like a music box sequence.