TB Treats: In loving memory of Toy Balloon Mark I

Nimai, guitarist in Toy Balloon, looked at the blackboard outside Ric's. "Oh, he's called it that?," he said. "He's been wanting to use that one for a while. I wanted to call it Boybeard." It was early 2007.

So I gathered that the name that fits the band's aural and visual asesthetic so well was chosen with little fanfare by the only other member, Cooper, who plays the Groovebox. The Groovebox! Silver thing the size of a laptop made by Roland, incorporating a 303, a 606 and a 909, or maybe the one after. Drum machine, synth and sequencer. The Groovebox took the debate out of song titles, giving us such hits as "74", "14", "36" and everyone's favourite, "18" (not an Alice Cooper cover).

They played instrumental music. You're probably thinking "soundtracks". Well, in that case the reference points are Beverly Hills Cop II for the tom rolls and synth bass and... jeez... Made In USA for the thrashy, climactic guitar. But then, the electronic scapes are Warped enough that Morvern Callar is just as apposite and the guitar benefits from a little bit of Top Gun afterburn (even if it's just Nimai's lemon-suck face in the high parts). Speaking of soundtracks, it's pretty accurate to say that their warm, retrofuturistic pop-pulse presaged M83's vaunted nu-gaze reinterpretation of John Hughes powerballad teendom in some ways (a good year before Saturdays=Youth).

Instead of hopping the dance w/guitars bandwagon, these guys drew from a solid education in '90s Australian post-rock, classic shoegaze and the millennial IDM stuff everyone listened to for about two years when rock was "dead" and extrapolated from there.

Gradually the tracks got names and the band got fans to learn them. "Dance With Yr Girlfriend", but noone got the hint. They practiced and performed at the Hangar and formed allegiances with other new electronic-leaning bands - aheadphonehome, Re:enactment, Mr Maps. Still noone really danced but there was always plenty of nodding and shuffling. Still no cover of "Axel F".

A couple of weeks ago at the Tongue and Groove I saw Toy Balloon for the first time in a few months. They had pushed their sound further in each direction - Cooper to ever more synthetic spaces and Nimai towards chainsawing abrasion - and were all the more lovable for it. Good peeps and not shy of a bit of humble mic chat, they let it be known it was their last gig before a hiatus which would not end until they had a singer. Now, they had been saying that sort of thing for about a year but this time everyone seemed to sense it was for real and bayed for an encore and, tellingly, the band obliged. (I can't recall the name of the new song, which I think involved the sea, but it was very good and highly danceable, although noone really danced).

According to Toy Balloon's Myspace they've been recording an album with Phil of aheadphonehome/The Hangar. This is something to get excited about. Again there's mention of adding vocals, which is hard to imagine, but then My Bloody Valentine found room for them in their dense bliss-out.

Toy Balloon played what may actually have been their last gig in their current incarnation last weekend at Tabu, to a tiny audience, and people danced.