Listen here

TRACK: The Don

WHO: Sisters of Transistors – 40 synth-manipulating fingers of dark eccentricity.

WHAT: They are, they claim, "the UK’s premier ladies combo organ quartet" and pump out some damn fine baroque disco prog.

HYPE: “Their plastic sixties freakbeat could be likened to say, Ipso Facto dressing up in Chrome Hoof's spangly capes and then dancing on broken Wurlitzer organs, and if that doesn't warm the cockles of your psych-rock soul, then frankly, you have no cockles." - The Lipster

WE SAY: Graham Massey really shouldn’t have to prove anything, really. As part of 808 State, not only did his very fingers forge the deliriously seminal Pacific State, but he was also one of the people who helped post-88 dance music progress into the album market and gain legitamacy, paving the way for virtually everyone whose output is measured in BPMs. But now he’s cropped up again, sans MC Tunes, and by jiminy things are a bit weirder this time round.

Forged in Manchester’s mythical South Manchester Museum of Keyboard Technology, Massey’s new pet project Sisters of Transistors is an imposing clandestine beast involving sacred rituals involving secretive covens and arcane practices involving bizarre pieces of electrical equipment and mystics' garb. It’s like Kraftwerk meets the Wicker Man.

That’s the story, anyway. Borne of a love of vintage obscuro synths and Dario Argento soundtracks (see also Midnight Juggernauts, Zombie Zombie et al), Sisters features the big man on drums and four keyboard-coaxing dames (including Massey’s son’s piano teacher, curiously). The love of proto-electronica drips from The Don’s pores; it recalls the mid-Nineties Moog boom, where Sixties experimental albums by the likes of Jean-Jacques Perrey and John Keating were rediscovered. The Don also captures the glorious moment when you’d find a track on one of those predominantly piffly charity shop albums that would work in a club – EVA being the primo example. Massey still has the funk, and though deeply gothic and baroque in intent, there’s a disco whiff about it, both in riff and beat. Glistening with sumptuous four-part female harmonies temper the synth nerdery and make it one of the more distinct and crackingest dance track of the year so far. It’s definitely the oddest though. Little doubt about that.

IF YOU ONLY NEED TO KNOW ONE THING: The Don recently graced the Simian Mobile Disco’s Fabricmix.

WHERE CAN I GET MY HANDS ON IT: The Don is released September 22 on This Is Music.

FIND MORE: www.myspace.com/thesistersoftransistors

Explore Music

• CD Reviews

• Live Reviews

• Classical

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of the Decade
• 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
• The 50 Biggest Movies Of 2010