Review: The Mechanicals

My e.p. 'The Mechanicals' has been reviewed by Mark Barton in Tales From The Attic Volume XI. His missive is a regular feature in the independent music and culture webzine God Is In The TV. Here's what he had to say about it:

Somewhere here after a casual rifling through cyberspace we happened across this little curio. A soundtrack no less for ‘the mechanicals’ story distributed by broken sea audio recorded and composed by the Manitou better known to kith and kin as British Columbia based musician Joshua M Blanc. Classic BBC Radiophonic Workshop fair is what you get for your time and due diligence albeit updated and eyed from a mid 90‘s Warp-esque minimalist craft, a perfect companion for those of you who managed to nab yourselves a copy of Ochre’s very excellent ’music from the tenth planet’ set from a few years back and I dare say that very excellent ’the séance at hobs lane’ outing from mount Vernon arts lab. Steeled in chilled atmospherics that creep with a tension seeped carnival-esque sense of the sinister, there’s a playful fondness for that old school hide behind the settee flavouring seeping out of these cosmic fairground sounds as though an Orbital c. ‘the box‘ and latter career Add N to X had been re-visioned by Raymond Scott whilst peeking through the eyes of the Barron‘s especially on the opening ‘the mechanicals – part 1‘. Etched in sparseness and couched in hymnal chorals ice chipped in detachment ’part 2’ is hollowed with the same analogue artistry as befitted the work of landscape whilst ’insufficient data’ is detailed with an ominously spectral wood folk chill factor that imagines Philippe Petit located in some servile mechanoid nightmare dosed up on a claustrophobic soundscape icily chimed to a meeting of Carpenter and Goldsmith minds. Creepily cool in short. http://themanitou.bandcamp.com/