Robert Wyatt is one of my favourite singers, writers, makers of wonderful music. It is with pleasure that I can introduce you to this, his latest album, and first for Domino. I first discovered Robert Wyatt’s music when borrowing, and then stealing, Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard from a library. Then came a second-hand purchase of the “Shipbuilding” 7″, which I played repeatedly, not even thinking to flip it over. A few years later, it was my near-20 years late discovery of the mid-’80s compilation and Old Rottenhat that really fixed my glue to Wyatt’s music. I was obsessed (and not least by that very b-side to “Shipbuilding” – “Memories of You”). It seemed in Robert’s “home” recordings, these unfinished-sounding, and barely accompanied, odds and ends – covers, originals, spoken pieces – with just wonderful synthesizers, percussion and piano to support the familiarly fragile voice, I had found home.

I’ve been delving further and repeatedly into his deep well for a few years now, and it is no surprise to even find his songs cropping up in many of my DJ sets, as well as my home listening. With Dondestan, Shleep, Cuckooland and now Comicopera, Wyatt seems to have found his own “home” music – each record intimate and sophisticated, played with (the suggestion of) ease and curiosity. And also fun. Comicopera, divided into three Acts – “Lost in Noise,” “The Here and The Now” and “Away with the Fairies,” continues where these albums had left off, but it is initially less dense than Cuckooland, and more light and live sounding.

-Alexis Taylor, Hot Chip