What is it with electronic artists who like to play with the media by telling porkies?

Ninja Tunes' Amon Tobin, the British creator of cinematic, noisy electronica, once famously said the noises on his album 'Supermodified' were totally organic. He claimed the breaks were made by spitting and farting and the bass sounds were made with motorbikes and tubas. It was later revealed it was pretty much all taken from records.

Aphex Twin, the crazy kid from Cornwall, claimed he lived in a safe, built his own synthesisers and that he was in fact Squarepusher. All lies.

Auckland-based electronic artist Phelps & Munro almost had people fooled they were the Simon & Garfunkel of New Zealand electronica. A duo that met at art school Not so. Phelps & Munro, who have just released a debut album, Slowpoke, is entirely the work of one man, Gerald Phillips.

Philips' carried on the tradition of electronic creators indulging in tomfoolery with the media. And why not too? He has sent media photos of Phelps & Munro that aren't of, erm, Phelps & Munro - the two club chicks first pictured in NZM for instance.

Perhaps when you make electronica you don't just want to talk about the dry techie side of things. Maybe this explains why these guys spice up their biographies and press releases.

Phelps & Munro makes out-of-it beats and is also out of the country when this interview takes place. Or is he?

"Yes, I'm visiting my brother in England. I haven't seen him in a number of years," he confirms.

It seems bizarre to release an album then skive off out of the country, but Phillips says there didn't seem to be much to stick around for because his scheduled tour of "... our fine nation's taverns and shopping malls" fell through.

"Plus this is a safe distance to keep just in case there's any backlash against my beats," he says.

A backlash for this bNet darling is unlikely. 'Slowpoke' seems to come out of nowhere to seduce both guitar fans and electronica boffins alike. It opens with a guitar riff reminiscent of the opening of Tortoise's 'Standards', and like Tortoise, 'Slowpoke' boasts a nice balance between the warmth of noisy guitars and the aloof coolness of electronic music.

The album would sit quite comfortably in the record collections of both a Straitjacket Fits fan and an Autechre enthusiast. No surprise that this reflects Phillip's musical tastes.

"Sometimes I lean toward the electronic side because it seems more innovative and willing to go out on a limb. Other times I just want to hear guitars intermingling or a band dynamic," he says, continuing that he sees the two styles as being very similar rather than poles apart.

While Phillips started playing drums when 10, he says it was computer game themes that really excited him. "We were lucky enough to own a Commodore 64 when growing up, so I was inadvertently influenced by the game music," he says.

"The producers of these gaming tunes were limited to three or four tracks yet still made some really amazing and complex music. I've been listening to those C64 tunes recently and they are still fantastic and put a lot of contemporary electronica to shame."

And maybe Phillips does too. His album takes the best elements of the sparse, hypnotising guitar-driven music of short-lived Kentucky band Slint, and the psychotic, jazzy drum 'n' bass of Squarepusher.

"You've just paid me the ultimate compliment. Gracias. Squarepusher and Slint are/were masters," Phillips says simply.
 
Along with a Pod effects unit, Casio VITone keyboard and a guitar, Phelps & Munro's music is written and constructed using an Akai MPC 2000 sampling workstation, which is also favoured by Dr Dre, Wu Tang Clan, Beck and DJ Shadow.
 
'Slowpoke' was mixed and mastered by Angus McNaughton in a process Phillips says was a little slower than expected, McNaughton being a 'busy man'.

"He was great to work with. I provided him with cabbage tracks and he turned it into delicious, nutritious coleslaw," deadpans Phillips.

The stereotype of the electronic artist is the techie boffin locked up in his bedroom creating beats like a modern day rendering of the Morrissey fan who would sit in his bedsit writing bad poetry. Phelps & Munro? Surely not.

"I would love to say I record my music somewhere other than 'my bedroom' but I'm going to have to further reinforce the stereotype of the electronica producing geek and say 'my bedroom'.

" He says the process of writing material for 'Slowpoke' was a fairly long-winded and uninteresting one.

"A number of the tracks on the album are reworkings of what some may call 'demos'. I had all these 'demos' floating around for years and it was just a matter of refining them."

And while Phillips does venture out of the bedroom every now and then to play live, he admits this doesn't happen often.

"Playing live is okay. I just try to keep my live appearances limited so punters don't get sick of me playing all the time."

He reckons the Phelps & Munro live show is nothing short of an extravaganza.

"Really it's just me standing there hitting pads on my MPC and nodding my head vaguely in time. Phew! Makes me giddy just thinking about it," he says.

And after playing a doozy of a show with Kid 606, Phelps & Munro is now in training for a couple of gigs coming up in Auckland. One is a belated album release shindig in November while the other is the impressively enviable support slot for Amon Tobin in December.

Speaking of electronic acts that add fiction to their bio's, what's Phillip's favourite fib he's told? "The one about Phelps & Munro only being one person. Gerald Phillips? Sounds made up even to me!"