Whether you exalt Momus as a pastiche-prince or conclude he’s merely a pretentious pirate with eye-patch and parrot (Kahimi Karie) in-check, the outright absurdity surmounted in his every release ensures, at the least, high points on the ingenuity scale.
The concept behind Folktronic is folk music in the year 2049, or as Momus so aptly states, "What would Alan Lomax have said if the Newport Folk Festival been invaded by boffins and geeks playing modular Moogs?" Ostensibly an homage to folk music, but whirled through Momus' post-modern tornado, Folktronic's twenty songs either come off sounding like a synthpop version of Weird Al Yankovic or fall completely short of any folk semblance. Although the parody approach adds considerable hilarity to the album with songs like "Finnegan the Folk Hero of HTML", it is clearly detrimental to the conceptualized ideal Momus had envisioned; lyrics like "tape-recorder man, this I won’t forget / this is folk music...concrete!" find the album so enmeshed in proving its prescience that the listener is never able to appreciate the "What if...?" theme.
The lack of a succinct thematic undertone surfaces about mid-album, as songs such as "Going for a Walk with a Line" and "Heliogabalus" drift drastically from the "plastic folk" order and rest on classic Scott Walker absurdity, with a touch of Eno for good measure. However, while Folktronic fails to live up to its stylistic notions, the music is just as dynamic and resourceful as anything Momus has ever constructed; electronic jingles like "Appalachia" or "Folk Me Amadeus" suffuse synth-driven textures with witty lyrics, resulting in an altogether stunning effect. As the album progresses, the songs begin to take on a somnambulistic intimacy, which reaches a sort of hypnotic zenith with the album’s closing number, "Pygmalism", a song originally written for Kahimi Karie’s Journey to the Centre of Me EP.
Although Folktronic is not a clear-cut conceptual triumph, it should nonetheless prove to be one of the better albums of the year; approach it from an unassuming perspective and it will satisfy any desire for an entertaining or forward-moving listen.
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