THINK LIKE A KEY MUSIC

The Album That Made Abbey Road's Handclaps Jealous

Ladies and gentlemen, prepare yourselves for Nick Frater's twelfth studio spectacular, "Oh Contraire" – an album so ambitious it had to be recorded along Glastonbury's ley lines just to contain its power. Picture this: vintage synthesizers performing a circus act on sacred ground, while French horns (courtesy of Brian Wilson Band’s own Probyn Gregory) dance with strings from London's Royal College of Music. It's what happens when a sophisticated-pop architect decides to build a sonic skyscraper using Mellotrons for bricks and harmonies for mortar.

But wait until you hear about the handclaps – guerrilla-recorded in Abbey Road's Studio 2 on a mobile phone, like musical ninjas executing the world's most rhythmic heist. This is an album where Supergrass meets Roxy Music for a motorik dance party, Queen crashes Supertramp's prog picnic, and somewhere, somehow, a pelican gets involved. From the French horn fanfare that kicks things off to the heart-wrenching goodbye that closes the curtain, "Oh Contraire" is what happens when you let a master craftsman loose in a candy store of vintage gear and legendary spaces.