Monster Mutt (2011)

Idaho-bred singer/songwriter Josh Ritter's V2 Records debut follows in the footsteps of 2003's Hello Starling only in instrumentation. While he retains his literate tongue and expressive voice, there is far less humor on Animal Years than on his previous two outings. Producer Brian Deck (Iron & Wine, Modest Mouse) keeps Animal Years intimate but transient, like a circus train crawling through a small town on a busy Saturday afternoon. Essentially built around two startlingly affecting diatribes on the war in Iraq, Ritter utilizes the voices of Peter and Paul, as well as Laurel & Hardy, to eke some kind of explanation from both the Administration and the Creator.

Konnecting… is a 15-track collection of electro-pop sings bringing together for the first time the works and three guises of electronic pioneers David Baker and Simon Leonard - I Start Counting, Fortran 5, Komputer.
Konnecting… tracks the duo's output from the first Mute release, Letters To A Friend (I Start Counting, 1984, produced by Daniel Miller), through to the club hit, Heart On The Line (Fortran 5, mixed by Vince Clarke), the Midnight Cowboy sampling Time To Dream (1993, Fortran 5) through to Komputer's paean to Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space (Valentina, 1997) to the very British electronic pop/folk music of Headphones And Ringtones and Like A Bird, from Komputer's 2007 release, Synthetik.