Team Spirit

Andrew Tuttle’s Fantasy League (SOMEONE GOOD RMSG015) doesn’t contain a single memorable melody, but each soft-focus and arpeggio-heavy keyboard piece has enough charm to keep the listener in swooning mode for the three or four minutes during which they inhabit this earth – or this cosmos, if you’d feel happier with a Tangerine Dream allusion. This may be because they all occupy a range within a single major key chord and never depart from the root note; I’m not enough of a musicologist to understand why, but this device conveys an uplifting and optimistic mood. The label press tell us that “Fantasy League [is] loosely based upon the idea of the creation of an album as a utopian fantasy environment. This environment sets social interaction against total isolation. It sets self reflexivity against self confidence, it promises to complete you, as you complete it.” I have no idea what this claim means; it just seems a roundabout way of saying it’s better to have friends than to be alone, which is a rather banal observation. At least it’s an optimistic one. Tuttle comes from Brisbane and has collaborated with label boss and fellow Australian Lawrence English, and has made some solo records as Anonymeye; Jennifer has noted his “blurry sharp buzz-noise dronescapes” created with an acoustic guitar here.