Glitter and Broken Glass

Principles of Geometry are a duo from the northern French town of Lille, and they make some seriously beautiful music together.

Sure, they wear their influences on their sleeves: early Boards of Canada (see Hi Scores or Twoism EPs), Funkstorung, Prefuse73, Autechre, John Carpenter, Vangelis, and fellow-countrymen M83. But that doesn't detract from the complex beat programming, deep basslines, pretty little melodies and simply gigantic swaths of synth wash that roll over every single track on their self-titled album. Each and every song is full of precision-laid structures, both in terms of beat programming and overall song structure - I don't usually liken songs like this to architecture, but there's definitely something there that makes me think of skyscrapers.

There's also something about the POG's combination of warmth and cold in their songs that is striking. Boards of Canada's first full-length, Music Has the Right to Children (a definite classic of IDM/downtempo music), was notable for the warmth they brought to songs that could be otherwise cold and mechanical. POG seem to be trying to play it both ways with partly warm synth washes, and icy cold ones, running alonside those frigidly precise beats. I dig it. I also suggest, as I do with many songs I post here, that you listen to this pretty loud (to get the full effect of the synths).

If you like this too, I strongly suggest that you buy their album, available here - they're on the French label Tigersushi, which is also an amazing online record store - seriously, they sell everything. Oh, POG have a website, but its still fairly minimal - the album just came out a bit ago, so hopefully there'll be more content up there soon.