{C}{O}{M}{B} – Future Days

{C}{O}{M}{B} are the Margate duo of Ollie Briggs and Jim Dixon, the latter also the bassist in Django Django, and “Future Days” is their debut single, out now on Brace Yourself Records. The title is lifted straight from the Can album, and while the two share little sonically, the borrowed name suits a track this rooted in experiment. It’s built from sampled guitar loops, tape machines, a child’s Casio keyboard and a scatter of acoustic instruments, oboes, kalimbas, double bass, with Dixon’s vocal drifting over the top of it all, airy but somehow still anchored.

What makes the track is how much of the room stays in the recording. You can hear voices in the kitchen, the hum of tape, the air of the space itself, all of it left in rather than scrubbed out. The pair come from an art-college background steeped in Dada and collage, and it shows: the song works like an audio collage of lived experience, lo-fi and hi-fi elements set next to each other as conversation rather than contrast. Their whole method treats mistakes as the raw material, accidents that turn into rhythm and texture.