Darla Records

Le Grand Magistery is proud to present the debut album by Idle Tigers. Idle Tigers is Ross Hawkins. Momus writes "Hawkins seems to be a young man suffused with delicate, carefully-structured lust, a neo-Victorian from Bradford, England who's relocated -- possibly for the purpose of study -- to Toronto, Canada. The world of his songs, though, has stayed rooted in England, or rather, the imaginary, filtered England that rises up in the spirit of an exile, replacing the reality with something more mythical. Here Lewis Carroll meets Brian Eno, and music hall meets the avant garde. Listening to [the song] "The Shadow Falls Across The Fridge, Frank" I was reminded of my first listens to Toog or The Divine Comedy (if they'd listened to a lot more Pierre Schaeffer) or, much further back, The Passage. These songs seemed to come from the odd place where the breezy meets the zany, and it's there we can have adventures in wonderland. "Unlace Me Behind The Hedge" is a touching, absurd account of a sexual encounter which somehow reminds me of Artery's mysterious song "Into the Garden" (a Peel favourite in the 80s, it concerns sibling sex). "I reckon that sex is just special effects," the fey-voiced Hawkins sings against piano arpeggios, "a rite, a performance by the fireworks department". His song "Jonah" could almost be something off my own first album, Circus Maximus." High praise indeed! Get it while it's hot.