With bliss-rock melodies sometimes comparable to their 4AD label mates Cocteau Twins, and a tasteful spin on the driving jams of Kraut-rock bands like Neu!, Magnétophone represents the intelligence and vigor of the best efforts in experimental rock.

The band hails from Birmingham, England, where they got started in 1995 when members their homemade acoustic and electronic instruments to holiday caravan (trailer) parks for impromptu gigs. "That was just a laugh, really," says Magnétophone's Matt Huish Saunders via e-mail. "Our mate knew of all these caravan parks that had bars, and thought it'd be a good holiday tour to play them. Needless to say, the tourists weren't generally impressed with our noisy electronica shenanigans."

But EPs and cassettes slowly gained the band a cult following. By the year 2000, the group could count the UK champion of subterranean rock, the late BBC DJ John Peel, as one of its fans. Magnétophone also drew the attention of England's 4AD, a label long associated with genre-benders like Bauhaus, Nick Cave's Birthday Party, This Mortal Coil and Gus Gus.

Childhood friends Saunders and John Hanson, who form the duo Magnétophone, were both born in the early '70s, which makes most of 4AD's early-'80s sound a little before their time. Essentially, Magnétaphone is a late-'90s reaction to an era UK music critic John Duran has referred to as the "ultra-utilitarian double anti-whammy of grunge and Britpop dragging the corpse of indie into the charts." Saunders and Hanson reacted to the shrinking diversity of the Birmingham scene by tapping into the remaining impulses of drone-rock, baroque-rock and psychedelia.

It's no wonder they would befriend someone like Sonic Boom (aka Pete Kember), who in 1982 co-founded Spaceman 3, the influential group that worked electronica into sensual flights that make much of today's techno and Ambient sounds seem like mindless robotics. He will be sharing the stage with them on the current tour, which Saunders says he's looking forward to.

"Artists are treated with so much more respect [on the Continent]," Saunders says. "We actually get fed and watered, and people are generally more open to at least listening to experimental music, and giving it a chance to grow on them." Saunders, who was barely 10 years old when Sonic Boom began his legendary career back in the '80s, says sharing the stage with him "adds a whole new dimension to the live sets, and it's always an absolute blast."