Machine Dreams

Back in 2007, Gothenburg's enticing tech-pop alchemists Little Dragon released their eponymous debut. With 'Machine Dreams' they've followed that auspicious and surprising concoction of digi-funk, subtle down-tempo rhythms and twitchy electronica with an equally beguiling and neatly layered album. Amid an intricate tangle of strings, beats and bleeps singer Yukimi Nagano's haunting, elliptical voice again takes centre stage, with good reason. During 'Never Never', notable for its synth restraint in a pop landscape of Calvin Harris and Lady GaGa electro bombast, 'Nagano' jerks her words out in intriguing fashion; she sings the way Mike Skinner raps, teasing the sentences out syllable by syllable. On the minimal, shuffling 'Thunder Love' (which sounds as spookily comforting as finding your way out of a forest at dusk) Nagano reminds listeners of her vocal similarity to Cocteau Twins siren Liz Fraser. Both possess heartbreaking croons, even if their lyrics are often unintelligible. Musically, Prince and fellow Swedish iconoclasts The Knife remain key influences. 'Looking Glass', replete with Nagano's stretching of ''you'' into a word five times its length, is 'Love Action' by The Human League with added 'Sign O' The Times' crunch, while opener 'A New' is all glacial synth atmospherics and woodblock, like Vangelis having a contemporary attempt at his seminal Blade Runner soundtrack.