Welcome to the wonderful, wonky, instrumental, imaginary, world of Larrison’s Connectors. Many of the album’s 25 tracks were discovered on a cassette – of which there was only 1 copy – by Freedom To Spend’s Jed Bindeman. Others were painstakingly reviewed and rescued from an archive accumulated by Larrison while living in Austin, Texas during the 1990s. Everything was created solely on a Casio CZ-500. 

Learning this I immediately thought of similarly constrained aural auteurs, Satoshi & Makoto, who favoured the very same vintage machine. However, Larrison fashions / shapes a quite different sonic space. The only overlap, perhaps, is the odd Bochum Welt-esque toy laser gun like blast, or winking, blinking alien bleep. Rather than IDM, house and techno as reference points, Larrison, instead favours nursery rhyme, music box melodies, mini squeezebox symphonies and mad, jaunty easy-listening library music cues. His keys squeak, mimic woodwinds, cavorting crystalline chimes and harp-like glissandos. Rhythms sound like they were bashed out on household objects. 

On Glass is the modular musing of Suzanne Ciani’s Buchla-bulit new age, reimagined for a shoestring, bedroom set up. Ice Planet echoes Lubos Fiser’s enchanted film scores. Winter Wave is kinda Christmas-y but played in percolating, tropical steel pan tones. Conjuring a holiday in Hawaii. Driving To Austin sorta rocks, with a riff like a distorted buzzing strum. The Casio sounding like its batteries are about to conk out. Calling to mind the “outsider” art of Daniel Johnston. 

Everything is short, a sketch, sometimes not more than a motif, but together they add up to a light-hearted, up lifting whole. Experimenting, doodling, wistfully whistling. The results landing somewhere between Adam Higton’s Cosmic Neighbourhood and the “through the looking glass” of The Brothers Woo. 

Larrison’s Connecters Vol. 1: Original Recordings, 1992–1999 can be ordered directly from Freedom To Spend.