Metronome – Take Down By Mikel Rouse Featured in The Wire UK

A full page feature in The Wire by esteemed writer Clive Bell appears in the August 2016 issue. Excerpts from the feature include:
“…With Take Down Rouse has hit the jackpot.”
“Rouse crafts a hothouse world of intricate electronic undergrowth, aligning himself with contemporary pop. Tongue firmly in his downtown cheek or not, he has made an alluring album. Rouse is like a journalist embedded with troops, who has finally cracked – he’s picked up a gun and started organizing his own night patrols.”
“[Growing Pains] layers contradictory keys and rhythms, but maintains a light touch and merry forward momentum. It’s typical of Mikel Rouse’s strange, driven collection of avant pop. When did polymeric postmodern minimalism get to be this much fun?”
“Take Down’s opener, ‘Habibi Lossless’ [is] a ten minute tour de force inspired by great Arabic singers like Abdel Halim Hafez and Farid Al Attrach. A casual listen would suggest that here’s a cool song, pretty narcotic – especially when Rouse breaks the beat down and jumps into a ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ chamber of Lennon-echo. A minute later he’s stood on a windswept beach for a Van Dyke Parks major key, a swooning dash of nostalgic hymn: ‘Yes we make love/In your American Dream’.”