The story begins with 808 State’s Graham Massey. Over the years, Massey acquired a whole bunch of vintage organs via eBay auctions and decided that the best way to keep these Moogs, Crumars and Farfisas in good fettle was to actually use them.
Enter four ladies from various Manchester bands and musical backgrounds. The four gave themselves a bunch of daft names (Sister Wigby Elka Whippany, Sister Ragna Teisco Dottir, Sister Naomi Doric Pencrest and Sister Henrietta Vox Humana), donned cloaks and began to make dark disco and proggy grooves on those organs.
Such fantastically bonkers carry-on led to the At the FerrantiInstitute album. The group have an interest in the history of organ combos and know all about a controversial performance by the Lillian Meyers Quartet at the World Fair in New York in 1939 and the Burton Woods Quartet who were at large in Manchester during the second World War with their US Army-supplied Model D Hammond organs.
However, it's the off-kilter, unlikely magnificence of tracks such as Solar Discowhich make this project such a wow. The tunes are weird, wild and more than a little daft, but this freestyle pop may well be the freshest thing you'll hear in an age.
