Shells

It's great how these days pretty much any young kid can just kickstart their own rock 'n' roll fantasies by just setting up a bedroom studio. All it really takes is a microphone and a crappy old tape recorder. Add a bit of determination and perseverance and you might have the blogosphere's next overly hyped lo-fi sensation.

Production's a bit of a different matter. Unless you're going for that lo-fi sound, you generally want your tunes to be audible. Same as no-one would want to listen to a crystal clear Ariel Pink as it wouldn't be "authentic enough". Getting the sounds right is the painstaking part.


Khalid Rafique aka. Shells makes post-rock influenced IDM that will appeal to fans of Seams and Four Tet. And he does it well. New track Clay shows us how good a glockenspiel can sound over a pulsating bassline. Perfect.

Clay by shells

Also I'm gonna give credit to anyone who names an EP after a Bret Easton Ellis novel as Rafique has done with the Lunar Park EP. It took me a while to realise but Clay might be a reference to Ellis' Less Than Zero. I love it even more for that now.


Both Clay and the Lunar Park EP are available from his Bandcamp page
http://shells.bandcamp.com