Not since Prince reduced his name to a squiggle have journalists struggled to replicate the three-symbol monikers favoured by members of Numbers Are Futile (check their Facebook page, if you're curious).
So let's unmask them as vocals/keyboards and drums/percussion duo Filipe Bernardo and Panos Baras, Edinburgh-based but originally from, respectively, Lisbon and Athens. Their musical terrain can be effectively summed up by The Great Chimera, which opens this debut album: what sounds like an electro-harpsichord wearing a fuzzy synth overcoat (bedecked with church-organ grandeur and electro-pop frippery) tumbles with a driving snare drum as languid vocals float above. Right across the album, that shoegaze voice stretches out further, even as the music remains hectic and a chronology of keyboards dive and resurface. Errors, Steve Reich, Tangerine Dream and Vangelis flash past the windscreen as adrenaline injections pummel the heart over and over again.
Alan Morrison
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