Two acts that irrevocably enhanced Dots & Dashes' 2010 were London's noisiest ambient duo Rocketnumbernine and North Wales-cum-Brixton trio The Joy Formidable. The past few weeks have seen Rocketnumbernine collaborate with Kieran Hebden at Gilles Peterson's Worldwide Awards, besides playing a heavily anticipated show with Alex Monk, whilst The Joy Formidable finally got to grace the dwindling racks of HMV this week with their long-awaited debut LP proper, The Big Roar. An accurately calculated conglomeration of slick reworks of set staples Austere, Whirring and Cradle and fresh cuts A Heavy Abacus, Llaw = Wall and Maruyama, it's every bit the rescuer of indie it always promised to be, hopefully capable of snatching NME covers and ubiquitous adoration from the likes of Brother, The Naked And Famous et al. Here's a reworking of Austere by, believe it or not, Rou of Enter Shikari fame. Perhaps even more inconceivable is that it's more than entirely acceptable a rehash.
Meanwhile, Ben and Tom Page (aka Rocketnumbernine) have given Luke Abbott's Trans Forest Alignment a thorough once, twice and thrice-over, with menacing cowbells combining with signature throbbing, ultimately haunting swathes of synth. Really quite something, but then if you've stumbled across the duo previously you'd have expected such delirious magnificence all along... Luke Abbott - Trans Forest Alignment (RocketNumberNine Remix) by Two Tap Digital
