BY NOEL GARDNER

A chap from a jangly Welsh country rock band turning up on Cardiff's premier label for DIY electronica and techno? If this was a bad 70s cop show we'd say something like 'What gives?!' and scratch our head quizzically. But it's not, and besides, we know the answers to the strange and beautiful musical conundrum set by Lifting Gear Engineer. Grab a pew.

The chap in question is formally known as Rob Morgan, and musically speaking he divides his time between Fillmore - a band of melody fanatics based in Port Talbot, influced by the likes of the Beach Boys and Super Furry Animals - and Lifting Gear Engineer, his solo project of pretty, skittering yet tough-skinned bleep music. The two projects exist aeons away from each other in the sonic universe, don't get us wrong; but LGE's machine.records debut Brain Holiday carries over an ineffable sense of quasi-orchestral emotion and sun-dappled melody.

In just under an hour, Brain Holiday's 12 tracks cover a serious amount of turf. The title track makes you think that birdsong synth and health-hazard grimey sublow bass were always meant to be together. 'Cave Machine' will get lovers of Warp Records types like Plaid reporting for duty on the floor, while 'Cables Pt 2' (which eager bunnies may have heard on machine.records' recent machine.music 2 compilation) edges closer to Yorkshire bleep legends LFO. While these have, more often than not, been the closest comparisons for LGE's early work, here Morgan takes his influences to extremes - epic digital drone sits next to almost-synthpop bounciness (betraying an early exposure to classical types like Satie and Debussy, as well as a teenage yen for the Pet Shop Boys).

There may be nothing here as indebted to rock'n'roll as 'Bee At My Window', a synthesized party-crash of garage psych which is the single LGE track to be previously released (on Boobytrap Records' A Step In The Left Direction compilation). But that doesn't mean that Morgan has turned inward and chosen anonymity. There's a unmissable vibrancy to every track here that should come across especially well when performed live, something Morgan is keen to do as much of as possible. Equally, he always writes music with the ambition of the public hearing it, setting out a more populist stall than the Aphexes and Squarepushers of this world.

You know, they used to call this stuff 'headphone music' before technology marched forward and, as it became possible to perform it live on a couple of kilos of kit, people opened up the back alleys of their minds a little. So, where should Brain Holiday be best appreciated? It's only fair that we leave the last word to Rob Morgan, the Lifting Gear Engineer himself: "Could be headphone, could be club, could be ghetto blaster on top of a mountain!"

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