Frog Pocket

Firstly, no; listen to me – if there’s one thing I won’t do it’s to come on primates. Now I’m as broadminded as the next man, if you’re standing next to Alastair Darling anyway, and I simply won’t do it, I tell you. It’s a filthy practice. I wouldn’t even do that for my doctor. Honestly, I haven’t been this incandescent with rage since those dirty monkeys in Dexy’s Midnight Runners tried to insist I come on Eileen. I mean I barely know the woman!


Anyway, stupid nonsense such as that my brain generates on a near constant basis sending me squirreling to the edge of my sanity aside, “Come On Primates” as it transpires, is the second record from Frog Pocket (is that a slang term for a wizard’s sleeve or hairy purse, mewonders?). And Frog Pocket, lavatories and ginbuckets, is absolutely bloody YOO-KNEEQ.


Imagine Aphex Twin mashing it up with the instrumentalists from Clannad, add in a bit of bongos, half a pill, cook on gas mark 3 for 45 minutes, take away the number you first thought of, invert it, invest it, invent it, taste it, add a bit of salt and three piles of organic donkey turds, and swallow your mother. That won’t give you any idea what Frog Pocket sound like, but making you imagine it actually gave me the horn.


OK, I stand by the 71 characters (with spaces) of that previous paragraph. Just. But Frog Pocket are worth more than a comparison to anyone else’s music, which should more than anything else I could possibly write make you genuinely excited about this record. I mean, who the fuck wants to listen to things that all sound the same all the time anyway???


Frog Pocket are capable of inspiring the invention of 3D glasses, or jurrasic cake, or alphabets, or goldfish. Quite simply, contemplating how to clearly explain it to you has turned my brain into mice and feathers, my curtains are now gymnastic, and my flute’s a geography.

- 5/5
- Subba Culcha

Scotland is a beautiful and sometimes harsh backdrop for creating music of any description, but somehow perfect for carefully assembled electronica. Like famous Cornishman Richard D James before him, affable chap John Charles Wilson, aka Frog Pocket, carries an unmistakeable Celtic influence through Gonglot, awkward song titles and all. Fittingly, Aphex Twin's ambient works and, more recently the beautiful piano-brushed mellow moments of his Drukqs double set provide marker points for much of Wilson's lush landscape of mindful beats. He's more than a mere copyist, however, with each creation spluttering with the incoherence of a malfunctioning hard drive until eventually bursting into lovely life that, in the case of Hurrah Sapphire Moon!, is engulfed once again by noise as circuits short and computers flat-line. Live is where Frog Pocket's wares really make sense with an assortment of guitar pedals, wires, samplers and eccentric gadgets abused by the amphibious one (in person a tall, wiry figure, with flowing dark hair). Overall there's a quiet intelligence that eschews any lazy, crazy breaks safety net and goes balls out for a slow-building pathway, even if you do long for more of his splendid violin&bass attack as demonstrated by these unpredictable live shows. Just don't let Frog Pocket nestle in comparative obscurity any longer.
-Reviewed by Adam Anonymous (undercover magazine) - Undercover magazine, Australia

Planet Mu have always been SERIOUS about their music. Frowny faced SERIOUS. Indeed I've actually been sternly told off in the past by Mr Paradinas for using the wrong terminology for genres (specifically for saying "ragga-gabba" instead of "breakcore"). Still, this is no bad thing, if electronic music was all wackiness, pisstakes and jolly japes it would be just as boring as if it was miserable and studious all the time, so plenty respect for those flying the flag for the SERIOUS stuff.

Frog Pocket is serious. Serious guitar harmonic fingerpicking, serious strings, serious folky harps and some serious drum madness. What sets him apart, though, is that it's often also seriously beautiful and seriously dynamic. Each of these pieces (yus - these are definitely "pieces" rather than just "tunes") develops with an inexorable logic from beginning to end with twists, surprises, demented rushes, noise-white-outs and weightless floating bits. Rarely for an electronic artist who uses a lot of strings, it manages to be dramatic and seriously moody without slipping into any goth/industrial clichés. The drums occasionally veer into AFX / Squarepusher territory (especially on "Carac Cyls" and "Hurrah Sapphire Moon!"), but Frog Pocket’s melodic style is so far removed from James & Jenkinson they always stay fresh. Hearing acoustic instruments this well blended with such ludicrously cut up and warped drum sounds is well impressive; they’re actually made to work together, rather than just jamming the acoustic sounds through some glitch madness patch to force them to sound electronic. There's no forced-ness to the additions of the classical and Celtic touches (indeed Frog Pocket is from Ayr & is trained in many traditional Scottish instruments) The "Bach down a WARP rave" climax of "Celebrimbor Tur-Anion" has to be heard to believed for its ability to fuse styles without being ‘novelty". A tendency to barking mad "alien voice" synths amidst all this helps pull it back from over-symphonic po-facedness, and overall the whole thing is seriously fun as well as merely serious.
-Reviewed by Joe Muggs (littledetroit.net) - littledetroit.net