Hometown: London.
The lineup: Matt Parker (guitar, keyboard, MPC, Digital Audio Workstation [DAW]), Chris Amblin (guitar, keyboard, MPC) and Ayu Okakita (vocals, loop station, percussion).
The background: Nedry are a London trio who, like the xx, incorporate space, eerie FX, glitchy textures and dubstep techniques. Much of their music is instrumental, but when Ayu Okakita starts singing in that high, haunting way of hers, you immediately think of a team-up between Björk and Burial, a cuter, more girly Beth Gibbons, or Joanna Newsom signed to Hyperdub. One comparison has been to "Thom Yorke's Eraser with a bit of a dubstep vibe and some post-rock influences", which is astute although even laughing boy can't manage a vocal quite this soaringly poignant.
On A42, the opening track on Nedry's debut album Condor, Okakita's vocals are whispery and soft but never weak and they contrast perfectly with the ever-changing beats, which are sometimes skittering and fast, other times slow, as though someone put a donk in the drum machine. It's lovely, like a spectral ballad mangled by a grime producer. Apples and Pears, the second track on the album, is even lovelier. As arrestingly pretty as anything on the xx record, here Okakita warbles in tongues over slo-mo rhythms and numerous twitches and detonations as well as gently picked acoustic guitar. It's a dark, dolorous electronic sound that shows that dubstep at its most lugubrious yet "song-like" isn't too far removed from trip-hop.
Excitingly, this is all happening "in-house": Nedry, an anagram of "nerdy", are a fully self-contained unit as far as we can tell, creating the music and producing it on their MPCs and DAWs. They only began performing, producing and recording in summer 2008, and since then they've toured with Maps and Pivot among many others from the digital margins and generally threatened to become the first mainstream dubstep indie band. Condor had a "soft" release a while ago, but now, with amazed/amazing responses to it in the press and radio, the Monotreme label has decided to give the album a proper release. We haven't heard the whole thing, and even if we did we'd probably put Apples and Pears on repeat and been inclined to ignore the rest at least for a few days, but from all accounts it represents a considerable advance towards a future where pop is routinely produced with dubstep measures in mind.
The buzz: "Gently skittering electronics and slow-building, spacious ambience – Nedry's gorgeous, minimal soundscapes are tailor-made for the wee hours."
The truth: Apples and Pears? Cor blimey luv a duck this is beautiful and no mistake guvnor see you down the rub a dub oi Rickaaaay!!!
Most likely to: Haunt your waking hours.
Least likely to: Use cockney rhyming slang.
What to buy: Debut album Condors is released on 22 February by Monotreme.
File next to: The xx, Bjork, Portishead, Four Tet.
Links: myspace.com/nedrymakesmusic
Tomorrow's new band: Tinashé.
