The Wire (UK)

Japanese group MInamo have evolved from a late 1990s duo into an ensemble whose various instruments include computer, guitar, Nintendo, bells, harmonium, analogue synthesizer, pedals and all sorts of electronic bells and whistles. Durée refers to Henri-Lous Bergson’s idea that consciousness is a constant flow that can’t be divided, reversed or measured. As if to stress that atemporality, the last track on the album is called “Beginnings” and this is an unordered, if not incoherent succession of pieces. Bergson’s notion is relevant to a great deal of electronic music, in its free progress in time and space, but with Minamo’s mixture of delicate instrumental flavour and intensive processing, they produce something unique, not least in their propensity for squealing peals of high-pitched instensity arising from more generic pools of drone.