Saturday. You‘re on your way to the fleemarket. »Come around at 1.00 pm. I might have something for you then,« the old man told you yesterday. He opens the trunk of his car and lets you have a look inside. Heaven, made from analogue circuits. The old man smiles, mumbles something about his attic and that he might find more old keyboards, takes the cash and goes back to his stall.
At home. The synthesizer sounds great, warm, embracing, lively, almost alive. But what‘s that noise, that strange hiss? You open up the main wodden cabinet. You suddenly relalise that this syntehsizer once was alive. It used to be a bug‘s family living room. The hiss and the buzz is caused by, now long dead, little bug kids who glued themselves to the filter circuits and who tried to play table tennis on the A-C-adaptor. »Should I clean the inside? Should I get rid of the cracklings?,« you ask yourself. No way, you like what you hear. This keyboard is alive. It‘s good that way. You close the door and start recording...
If our mutual friend found beetles in his synth, ISAN‘s equipment must be inhabited by proper salamanders, pattering constantly over circuits, stumbling over wires. Robin and Toe, the two mates operating this ›Integrated Services Analogue Network‹ (ISAN), appreciate the salamander‘s help and dedicated this whole album to their little friend. A couple of years ago, they both met in Leicester, discovered a common interest in using dodgy old keyboards to make a dodgy old noise‘ and started recording together. Mixing the simple beauty of melodies generated with analogue keyboards and the bumpy, quirky rhythms old drum machines create when you switch them on, ISAN produce some of the most unresistable pop anthems the whole family can hum along to. Robin and Toe themselves acknowledge the influences of Autechre, AFX, Brian Eno, Stereolab, My Bloddy Valentine, Seefeel and The Human League. Names that might give you an idea of what ISAN is all about. However, they do not really match their sound. ISAN sound more relaxed, childhood-reflecting, soothing, supportive, bright and shimmering: electronic music which, transformed into medicine, would make drugs obsolete. We‘d all just swallow a little ISAN salamander every morning, kickboard into town meeting friends and having brightly coloured drinks. And Robin and Toe would join us, for sure, with tapes full of new tracks.
