"how i learned to stop worrying and love the grid"

The cover of Vittoria Fleet's debut LP, on the quality French label n5md, shows a geodesic dome rising from a forest canopy. It's a decent analogy for the electronic sculpture of pulsing waves and acid melodies, rising from the earthy foundation of beats and vocals.

At this point, naysayers and doom merchants decrying the death of everything, have become a tired and broken refrain. Yes, we know; there are no new ideas. Yes, we understand; your generation was so much better than ours, and we are doomed to a dwindling twilight half-life of recycling your regurgitations. Obviously, the only art that is meaningful emerges from a vacuum, like some tribe of noble pygmys, untouched by civilization. Or Jandek.

For the rest of us, however, living, working and seeking inspiration in 2014, you have probably heard a lot of records. Possibly millions of them. Maybe even billions. It is just as suspect to deny your influences as it is to ape or cop them, maybe even more so.

So, yes, let us get the obvious out of the way: Vittoria Fleet sound a lot like late '90s Bjork, mainly due to the floating quality of Giada Zerbo's vocals, which features a slight, hard-to-place accent. This similarity is furthered by shifting, skittering percussion and squiggling analog synths, that brings to mind late '90s IDM/braindance, from the likes of Aphex Twin or Wagon Christ.

This late '90s esoterica is augmented by a late '70s/early '80s analog electronic quality, Vangelis minimoogs and acid squelches - all hands on deck, riding knobs and twisting faders.

Vittoria Fleet are clearly re-organizing sounds from all eras, anything that strikes their magpie tastes, which are refined as a sommelier's palate. They may be drawing sounds, styles and influence from all over, but there is nothing scattered, slipshod or random about their approach. Instead, they are trawling the annals of history, particularly the history of Electronic music, choosing what they like, jettisoning the rest, and then carefully polishing and placing every incident. While this record may have it's roots in academic and futurist musics of the past, there is no mistaking this as anything other than completely contemporary.

The secret is in the bassweight: you hardly ever heard drums this tight and muscular before dubstep. In 2014, we are getting bass and compression down to a mystical science, making beats that are able to simultaneously bludgeon and caress, like the best sex ever. And you're not even sore the next day.

Where their influences sounded distant, airy and aloof, through the disassociation of the intellect, Acht manages to be futuristic while still having heart, flesh and heat.

Acht is the duo's debut LP, following 2011's well-received Kissing Cousins EP. Since then, VF have migrated from east London to the cradle of Techno, Berlin. Here's hoping this move will be beneficial, as this pair deserves to be heard by tens of thousands.

In the press release for Acht, they talk about "A careful balancing act that is the nature of the music they make and the processes required in nurturing it." A balancing act, between the organic and the electronic, between the delicate and details and the fierce and forceful. It's hard enough to get these fluttering walls of sound, but to adorn them with lace and Christmas lights is a mystical science, indeed.

A very impressive debut; a must hear.