Metronomy

Metronomy was formed by Devon-born musician and producer Joseph Mount in 1999 after his dad gave him an old computer, where he began to compose music as a hobby, and was influenced by the likes of Aphex Twin and Kraftwerk. After relocating to Brighton in order to go to university there, the live aspect of the Metronomy name was perfected, with life-long friend Gabriel Stebbing and new friend Oscar Cash supporting him, originally under the name of The Food Groups, but this was dropped and the pair joined Metronomy. In September 2005, a six-track EP entitled Wonders was released as a promotional CD via the Spanish shoe company of the same name; this release had very little information attached to it until research by members of the unofficial Metronomy forum were able to purchase 5 copies from the company who promoted the event in December 2009, with it going online in January 2010. Half the tracks on the EP were part of forthcoming releases, while the other half are actually exclusive to this release. December 2005 saw the release of the You Could Easily Have Me single on the now-defunct Holiphonic label; this single was very well received by the press, and was a sign of things to come. In June 2006, the debut was fully released (it was originally a 500-only cloth case format); Pip Paine (Pay The £5000 You Owe) is personally one of my favourite albums of all time, and it's not hard to see why it received such good press, as with the debut there's a real sense of atmospheric joy at times; the demand was so popular that Because Music re-issued it again in November 2009 with four bonus tracks, including the exclusive In The D.O.D. The only other single from the album was Trick Or Treatz in the later part of the year, with a reworked 12" white label by South Central also getting good reception. Metronomy then went back into the studio to work on their follow-up; the first result from these sessions was November 2007's Radio Ladio, self-released by Metronomy on the Need Now Future Records label, which was more "poppy" than his previous work. After signing to French label Because Music shortly after this single, a trip back to the Pip Paine days followed up Radio Ladio, with April 2008's My Heart Rate Rapid featuring near-enough incomprehensible lyrics and a very strange video involving people in full body costumes dancing about. Two more singles followed before the album dropped: July's dark vacation tale of Holiday, and the harrowing tale of Heartbreaker, released just a week before Nights Out came out on 22nd September, and much like the debut, also received rave reviews. Post-album single A Thing For Me has become one of Metronomy's best known tracks, especially because of its karaoke-esque video. April's reissue of Radio Ladio was the last release that Gabriel was involved in, as he quit the band to focus on his own group of Your Twenties. Bassist Gbenga Adelekan and drummer Anna Prior joined the group shortly after in order to enhance their live performances. The most recent work from Mount was September's Not Made For Love EP, which, while keeping the lyrical themes from Nights Out, attempts to remake the Pip Paine sound that he originally created. You Could Easily Have Me's video is below, as are the downloads.