Minuit: The Guards Themselves

Herald rating: ****

Minuit were a wee rock band before turning into a biggish local deal as a breakbeat/electronic trio and on this, their second album, their roots are showing, loudly.

It's there in the punk-attention-span opener of I'm Sorry Baby, the Moog-metal riffs of We're All Scared Professor, the Ramones-at-soundcheck drums of Fate! and elsewhere. But those gear changes are what makes The Guards Themselves a curiously riveting album. Frontwoman Ruth Carr sounds more genuinely idiosyncratic than affected, whether in breathless mode above the Headless Chickens-like gloom of the title track, the alien-invasion synthesisers of Bury You in Brazil, or calm and collected on the equally lovely torch-techno of Do Me In or the dreamy finale The Sum of Us.

The group display an increased confidence and their best - like the vaguely Eastern European-sounding Lights Down Low and aerobic single Fuji - help give this electronic-plus album plenty of momentum.

Label: Tardus