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Well, you should know by now that my taste in music is wide. Electronic music made with soul and intelligence has always been close to my heart. Renfro is one of the recent electronica artists that has made my heart jump a little faster.

Based in East London & North Devon, UK, renfro are Tim Branney and Atom-James Draper. Tim sings the songs and Atom sources found-sounds. Together they write words and make music from recorded fragments. The songs on their debut album “Mathematics” (out on 16th June worldwide + digital) are not the ones that jumps right at you and says “hey, listen to me”. These are songs filled with calmness, subtle but effective arrangements, delicate and fragile harmonies. “Pops, clicks and fizzes” seems to be a slogan of theirs, and there sure are a lot of noises like that underneath everything here.

The warm and soulful layered vocals adds the perfect human touch to the compositions. According to their bio, “Tim & Atom like the avant-garde, but often find themselves wanting to sing along too. They enjoy Low and Midlake as much as they do Tod Dockstader and William Basinski, so their aim is to meld experimental electronic musical techniques with dream-pop songwriting.” This is easy to hear when you listen to the album. The background has a lot of strange experimental elements that make the music interesting in many ways, but with the wonderful, almost pop vocals on top, the songs are opened up, – made accessible.
Renfro has made a brilliant debut, – something that should be interesting for more than the typical electronic music fan.

You can listen to the whole album, all full tracks, on last.fm.

Here is Renfro with a song from the album:

Renfro – Capture