POPS, CLICKS & MELTED CIRCUITS
Based in East London & North Devon, UK, renfro are Tim Branney and Atom James Draper. Tim sings the songs and Atom sources found-sounds. Together they write words and make music from recorded fragments.
Renfro formed in late 2005, born from a mutual love of electronic music and West-Coast vocal harmonies. Tim & Atom like the avant-garde, but often find themselves wanting to sing along too. They enjoy Low and Midlake as much as they do Tod Dockstader and William Basinski, so their idea is to meld experimental electronic musical techniques with dream-pop songwriting.
Early on, whilst waving microphones at elephant seals in Santa Cruz, Ca., they also wondered why pop music couldn't be made using a soundtrack of field recordings and electro-acoustic manipulations. Those same elephant seals ended up joining a sonic cast that includes malfunctioning leads, NASA feeds from deep space, tapped teeth, burning plastic (a credit card sacrifice), a host of wild animals and numerous controlled bursts of static & distortion.
Words are also important to renfro, and they try to remain optimistic in the face of the political and social realities of modern life. Modernity can be a tough gig, after all. In their lyrics renfro like to explore the poetics of isolation, difference and collapse. For guidance they binge on film, literature and assorted junk culture.
Mastered by Kramer (producer of Low, Dot Allison, Robert Wyatt etc.) their already widely acclaimed debut album, 'Mathematics', finds lushly layered vocals residing amongst twinkling tunes that float on a sea of pops, clicks and melted circuits. A kind of electronic-alternative-gospel-folk for the 21st Century. Sometimes it's melancholy, and sometimes it chuckles quietly in the corner.
Renfro are interested in making music that embraces the future, rather than bathing in nostalgia for a retro-electro past. They believe that you can, and indeed that in 2008 you should make pop songs from the sound of technology breaking down.
