“Much of Crewdson’s singular sound can be attributed to his musical (instrument) inventions. Via these vehicles, Crewdson crafts skewed sonics that boggle the mind.” XLR8R

‘Toys’ is the follow up to producer/instrument builder Crewdson’s debut album ‘Gravity’ on Slowfoot Records in 2011 and is a stunning album which is at once archaic and futuristic, folk and tech, accessible and experimental, danceable and introspective, naïve and sophisticated, heart-felt and humorous.

‘Gravity’ drew huge acclaim from the likes of Gilles Peterson, Clash, XLR8R, Time Out, BBC, Future Sequence and The Fader to name but a few.

The album is a highly skilled and inventive production that draws on a myriad of post-rave styles – garage, dubstep, techno, broken beats – and comparisons can be made to the electronic explorations of the likes of Flying Lotus, Polar Bear, Fourtet; plus contemporaries Mount Kimbie, Micachu and Jon Hopkins’ work with King Creosote.

The weird and wonderful hardware electronic musical instruments invented include the The Odd Box, The Concertronica, The Eggiophone and The Sonic Bonnet and the album owes much to these instruments, which have increasingly become central to his production methods and sound, as well as the album’s title and imagery. They also provide a clue as to his music’s direction. Where the music on ‘Gravity’ blended jazz inflected harmony and concrete soul with his trademark skewed electronics and tumbling beats, ‘Toys’ is more informed by the harmonic, lyrical and sonic ideas found in folk music and his instruments perfectly reflect this meeting of folk and technology, the archaic and the futuristic.

In between his debut and this album Crewdson found time to release records as one half of electronic soul duo Eckoclick, be Matthew Herbert’s right hand man both on and off stage as well as running his Accidental Records, write music for prominent designer Paul Smith, collaborate with London’s National Centre for Circus Arts on a bespoke performance, work with fashion designer Jodie Cartman to create a range of playable musical headpieces, go on tour as tech support to Thom Yorke AND contribute sounds to the rescoring of the first ever British sci fi movie ‘A Message From Mars’ as a part of The New Radiophonic Workshop in collaboration with the BBC and the BFI.

CLASH: “Fragmented post-dubstep with jazz leanings, the producer’s work was imbued with a wonderfully engrossing sense of space”