EAR’s recorded output lives up to the name. My first encounter was with “Data Rape pt 9”, an excerpt from the “Data Rape” album which consists of the sounds of electronically-warped Speak & Spells (educational toys made by Texas Instruments). I’m dubious about the pun in the title – rape is evil, but “circuit bending” is good, and conflating the two in such a way doesn’t please me. That said, the sound is weird and haunting, and I hope that you find that an attractive description. Some of the music’s fascination comes from the knowledge that somehow, somehow, it all comes from a perverted attempt to synthesise English speech.

The “Pestrepeller” record is another gorgeous perversion. EAR have taken a piece of music (by the band Pestrepeller – Harley Richardson from that band tells me that the original is “more or less unlistenable”) and squurged it through synth modules and other bits until it turns into an atmospheric thing, a sort of landscape with high-sided buildings in deserts, mysterious sound fading in and out quite suddenly, for a long time.

The B-side of this record really is genius – “Automatic Music (for Oscillator, Ring Modulator & Filter Clusters)”. The record sleeve shows a diagram of the arrangement of synth modules, a sober, precise flow chart which tells you exactly what was plugged in where, before the equipment was left to sing to itself for twelve minutes. The resulting music is amazing, the most beautiful thing I’ve heard from a synthesiser. And it did it all by itself! The automation means that crescendos and pulses occur in inhuman places, riding straight over the way any human would have composed it, and never doing what you might expect. It reminds me of the Flaming Lips' 4-CDs-at-the-same-time album "Zaireeka", in which the CDs are expected to go out of time with each other, and "rhythms fight each other ... sometimes reverb comes before a sound occurs, other times it's delayed ... crescendos miss their cues either late or early or both ... making music that purposely destroys its own momentum ..." [from the sleeve notes].

Going to see EAR live, I wondered what was in store. I had heard of gigs being made out of the Speak & Spell experiment, for example, so I expected the unexpected. I turned up (at the Spitz, Aldgate, London) to find... some old analogue synthesisers. Hmm. They were sat on tables, facing out towards the audience as though our vintage-knobs-and-wires fetish should keep us entertained for a while. The man who is EAR (he goes by the name of Sonic Boom, ex-Spacemen 3 and Spectrum) thanked us for coming, and then started to play the synths. What? I was worried. You call this experimental? Some old synthesisers, making droney and bloopy sounds which gradually shift around? A million people have done exactly that before, including myself.

I was waiting for something weird to happen. Perhaps Sonic would start playing the wires with an electrified violin bow, or set the equipment alight, or... And while these thoughts were preoccupying me, the music slipped in. Quite gradually I noticed that Sonic is a master of his equipment - no, not a master, he’s good friends with his equipment, and he has spent so long with it that he knows how to coax brilliant things out of it, all in slow motion. The sounds that were reverberating around the venue were filter whooshes and low drones and repetitive burbles, just exactly what you expect old synths to do, but moving around in ways that could coax waves of emotion to pass through the room. I say could – not every moment was a touch of genius. For a while I was surprised that Mr. Boom had let the bass drone thrum along for so long, quite an obvious and uninteresting musical idea. But then the drone was overwhelmed by what sounded like the inside of a tractor’s engine, cluttering and growing in volume. It was strange: it was noise, it was noisy, but not harsh enough to discomfort the ear. The bassy drone returned later, but - well - it was kind of refreshed after its holiday.

EAR’s music, live and recorded, has a lack of irony that is completely refreshing. Perhaps the moniker also serves to maintain this – it points towards boffins, science, and seriousness. EAR has certainly refrained from “enhancing” the sound of warped electronics with comedy samples or hip-hop breaks. And for this live show, Sonic even refrained from the novelty-addiction which can come with the avant garde. I have nothing particularly concrete to say about the gig - no anecdotes of explosions or nudity; but the music was lovely, and I’m very happy I was there to hear it.

View EAR's catalogue at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk