Silver Columns

When Silver Columns’ white label singles “Brow Beaten” and “Yes, and Dance” mysteriously emerged, glinting and fully-formed, seemingly from nowhere last year, tongues were set wagging. There hadn’t been anything quite like them before – “Brow Beaten” was a skittering, helter-skelter electro pop jolt to the heart, sounding not unlike the spirit of Erasure trapped in an arcade pinball machine, while “Yes, and Dance” – cheekily, their own remix of a yet to be released track – was lush, slowed down, hallucinatory – the drowsy, lysergic morning after the messy night before. It was a brilliantly askew one-two pop punch unlike any other, and as fitting an introduction as any to Silver Columns.

However, the duo (revealed earlier this year to be Adem and The Pictish Trail) have plenty of other tricks up their sleeve, as abundantly displayed on “YES AND DANCE”, their endlessly innovative debut long player. Conceived, recorded and produced together (despite the fact they live on opposite ends of the UK) in less than a year, it is quite possibly the most unique, beautiful and offbeat pop album you’ll hear all year, created, as it is, by two excessively talented mavericks who had never even made this kind of music before.