couple years ago there were these two cats on Domino Records, right? Both of them did this crazy electronic shit, mixing kraut rock, shoegazer, psych-rock, IDM, and general ass shaking goodness. Now, these dudes had actually been around for a while, see, and cat #1 was even in a pretty well-known band though he was better known for his solo output. The second cat was known because some hoary punk douche sued him over a name and, I dunno, maybe cause cat #2 was Canadian, punk douche actually got his way and cat #2 changed his name to, like, some sort of deer or something. Anyway, these two cats formed like Voltron to create FOLKTRONICA and kids just went fuckin’ batty over it, right?

Right?

Why was it that people weren’t merely satisfied that Kieren Hebden (cat #1) and Dan Snaith (cat #2)—better known as Four Tet and Manitoba/Caribou—put forth some pretty resplendent work? Instead I was regaled with megillahs of the formation of “Folktronica” and the two musicians’ latest releases being thorough repudiations of that title, turning what was the coincidental appearance of two like-minded artists into the genesis of a new genre. And if we are to entertain such proclamations, then where’s the beef? Where are all the relative unknowns name-checking “My Angels Rock Back and Forth” and “Jacknuggeted?” I mean, creating a supposedly new subgenre isn’t like finding a sandbox, it’s like finding a new state.

Case and point: Koushik. Painting 60’s psych with a distinctive hip-hop brush, Be With has received nary a look of recognition from critics’ eyes. Yet it inhabits precisely the spaces Hebden and Snaith supposedly crafted, its melodies strewn out warmly across 15 tracks practically unforced by any time limits. Rather than drag out a seductive melody until it eventually becomes tawdry, the longest song on Be With is a Lilliputian four minutes. Simultaneously, however, the melodies and rhythms employed seem to operate on internal metronomes that always move at a speed approximating a blunted narcoleptic. That’s why something like “Ride Out,” at an anorexic 50 seconds, sounds like a complete statement: he never once tries to unnecessarily inflate the arena with psych-wank or general sludge.

Granted, it never reaches the mass of something like Up In Flames and is practically ephemeral when juxtaposed with Rounds and especially Everything Ecstatic, the album’s internal parts are still impressively multifarious. One minute he’s tossing around harp samples (“Be With”) while the next he uses handclaps and tambourines (“One In A Day”). On one song horn and orchestral samples slink by insouciantly (“Back to The End”) while on another he uses a double bass to add untreated weight (“Too Many Ways”). The point is that if you try to move too quickly through the album, if you concentrate on the length of each song rather than the content, you will have experienced none of its impressive intricacies.

The album’s flow is perhaps its one glaring misstep since the varying song lengths can become a little jarring when one doesn’t flow into the other properly (the album itself is merely a combination of three separate EPs). And even if Koushik manages to illusorily stretch the album longer than it should be, the total run time is still under 30 minutes. But, like I said, it’s better to consider the album pithy rather than brief and it serves you better when the artist isn’t using an extended song length as sonic equivocation of sorts. So bring back the “Folktronica” tag, if only so that another artist may be considered a member and given his own decoder ring (seriously, I never read what Folktronica actually was, as much as who its two sole members were). Hell, I’d join the temporary chants if it meant artists like Koushik were offered more attention.

Vive Le Folktronica!