With I Tweet The Birdy Electric, Icarus present a rarified vision of the acoustic instrument; the cause célèbre of the 20th century as the lost art of the 21st. In a society obsessing over the possibilities of the technocratic welfare state, it has become more common to find computers wired to duplicate the multiplicities of an instrumental language than real musical instruments or musicians. As the laptop cavorts with ever larger and more complicated methods of diffusing sound, our instrumental tradition can almost be seen receding into the stockpile of obsolete mechanics. Icarus appear to have stumbled across a warehouse full of arcane bits and pieces; scores, records, old magazines and instruments which are now out of tune, broken and almost lifeless. After listening to a few (scratched) records from the era, they have set about mechanically transfusing life into the sounds and instruments at hand. Seen in this light, Icarus’s fifth album is something of a modern conjuror’s trick.
