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New music: BTU – Swordbeerfish

This unique collaboration between Brazil's Babe, Terror and enigmatic producer U is a brilliantly confounding concoction
Thu 28 Feb 2013 06.54 EST

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Listening to the music created by BTU, aka Brazilian experimentalist Babe, Terror and reclusive producer U, is akin to having five songs playing simultaneously on your computer. It's a disconcerting, oddly captivating experience that does away with the music rulebook in favour of creating various sonic textures that seem to be almost working against each other.

The story of how it all came about is also a fairly complicated one, so pay attention. Basically, while Babe, Terror was living in England he recorded some sounds on a tape, which then found its way to U through a mutual friend ("I met a girl in London. She took me for a ride in her car on the north circular. There was a tape playing in the car, the tape was old but I liked it," is how U describes it). With a different copy of the tape, Babe, Terror then made some beats for the sounds he'd recorded, while separately U also made a remixed version of the original tape. Further down the line, the pair met and compared what they'd done and remixed the whole thing to create the forthcoming EP, Without Armour. The first song to emerge from this unique collaboration is the oddly-titled Swordbeerfish, premiered here. Featuring a woozy concoction of drunken horns, percussive beats and strange, backwards vocals, it's a disorientating swirl of a song that slowly draws you into its beautiful confusion.

Without Armour is out on 11 March on Phantasy