ANNOTATED UNIVERSE by SAGAN YOUTH BOYS

Emerging from the fertile, underground electronics scene that has sprouted-up around Carrboro, North Carolina in recent years, Sagan Youth Boys are very much its resident masters of 21st-century Kosmische Musik experimentation.The duo consists of P. Maier (Lack, VVQRT) and S. McConnell, who craft galactic miniatures dedicated to their hero and namesake, the great Carl Sagan: astronomer, cosmologist, utterly far-out thinker. Employing an array of classic technology (Korg, Moog, Roland, Electro-Harmonix, et al.), the Boys and their celestial compositions certainly belong to the modern continuum that also claims Panabrite, Afterlife, Motion Sickness of Time Travel and Mist. Yet they aren�t Kosmische purists/traditionalists. As Annotated Universe (their debut slab of wax for the Tone Log imprint) reveals, Maier and McConnell are polyglots deftly versed in numerous sonic codes, from Italo disco and �70s dub to space-age pop and Neue Deutsche Welle. As a result, they temper their love for synth-generated drift-n-drone with stretches of metronomic hypnotics and groove exploration. But what�s also vital to note is how Sagan Youth Boys� work frequently exudes a DIY, basement-bred flavor, especially in those moments when they incorporate touches of Hammond M3 and brass (cornet, baritone). It�s this last quality, humanistic and decidedly earthbound, that makes one think Maier and McConnell are probably just as concerned with inner as they are outer space.