Randan Discotheque

Sonderweg

(Bonjour Branch)

Although the name sounds like a Daft Punk tribute act hailing from Inverness, Randan Discotheque is the musical sideline of artist Craig Coulthard, who last year turned a remote area of Borders woodland into a football field with his Forest Pitch project. Nor do the songs dress up in a white Travolta suit and strut their stuff to a disco beat, although it's impossible not to tap at least a toe along to the funky bass, fizzy keys and fuzzy guitar that run the length and breadth of the album. The starting point is, perhaps, the danceable post-punk of Gang Of Four and A Certain Ratio, although it's not long before the music swings past Postcard Records on the way to a gig at the art school. There's hit-or-miss indie twee in the DNA too (notably in the deadpan humour of Coulthard's lyrics on the likes of Heather The Weather) as well as a sound-of-the-moment folksy element that separates Sonderweg from the art-pop dabbling of peers such as Martin Creed and Richard Wright.

Alan Morrison