HER SPACE HOLIDAY

MARC BIANCHI, THE LONE GUN of Her Space Holiday, has spent his career in music creating a privately obsessive world of synth whirrs, wood cracks and whispered, wry lyrics so personal you feel invasive listening to CDs like Home Is Where You Hang Yourself and Manic Expressive. Somehow, his usual aesthetic of twitchy guitar twirlings and primitive electronics manage to make pretty pop music. It's a shadowy sunshine noir for sure, a mish-mash equitable to his influences of pioneering of sound design both classic (Brian Wilson, Phil Spector) and new (Mark Bell, Matmos, and Cornelius). "They took the technology in front of them and turned confusion into a completely human experience," says Bianchi of his heroes. "At the end of the day, that's what I would hope to do with my own songs."

He must have made his newest record, The Young Machines in the twilight of that day. Bianchi's newest songs are honed and focused, less confused than previous work, maintaining an electronic-sonic impurity that is songwriting first and new tools second. For Young Machines and its best songs, Bianchi's songs are permeated with human elements. "Before, all the tracks were laid out as instrumental sat first and then some random vocals, which at times were never written down, got added later. All that came out of it was two 40-minute discs of holes and short comings," he says. "This time, I tried to take the abstract feelings and situations of the last couple of years and turn them into stories of sorts."

A.D. AMORASI

Mush Records