Coz Littler, the artist formerly known as Mr. Chop and with his moniker now, ahem, chopped down to simply Chop, is set to release his debut album, entitled Illuminate, on 13th August via Now-Again. It’s the follow up to his 2009 debut, Lightworlds, which drew liberally from synthesiser music and the weirder ends of prog.
In advance of the album’s release, he’s recorded us an exclusive mix that offers some sonic co-ordinates to help plot the album’s course, taking the listener on a jagged journey all the way from Broadcast to the uneasy thrum of Suicide, kosmische flavours from Popol Vuh and Cluster, Alexander Robotnik and many more. You can listen to it via the embed below, and find the full tracklist at the bottom of the page.
Illuminate finds Littler further plumbing the sort of depths that this mix hints towards. He runs the Cheshire-based Ape Recording Studios, packed with analogue and vintage synthesisers plus a host of other gear, and for the album – which first began taking shape not long after the release of his first EP – he ensconced himself within the studio across the course of three years.
Later, once a sprawl of initial tracks had taken shape, they were woven together with help from friends including Heliocentrics drummer Malcolm Catto and The Coral’s Bill Ryder Jones, as well as Littler’s own voice – "at times processed through a WWII-era bomber pilot’s reconditioned microphone, at others deconstructed via an early Texas Instruments computer," as the text accompanying the album’s release puts it. The resulting album riffs on jazz, cosmic synth music and the futurist impulses of early Detroit techno (especially in his near-maniacal, robotic vocal barks), among many other things. For a taste of what to expect, listen to album track ‘Building Blocks’ via the embed below, and keep an eye out for the full album’s release in mid-August.
