Casiotone for the Painfully Alone

The brilliantly, brilliantly named Casiotone For the Painfully Alone is the project of Chicago’s Owen Ashworth, a sometime film maker whos hushed, craggy, regret filled vocals are supported by a drum machine and various keyboards that combine to make bedroom symphonies of strange beauty. Imagine a fax machine telling you about his divorce over an Erasure backing track being played at 22rpm. At 4am. In the dark. His instrumentals are where he really sound interesting. Take ‘Town Topic’ which is the perfect soundtrack to a wistful, nostalgic daydream abut the seaside in 1954 or ‘Young Shields’ which sounds like something a Legoman would have on his car stereo on a road trip. Be warned, his singles take some tracking down, but out his albums the brilliantly titled ‘symphonies for a lonely subway car’ and ‘Etiquette’ are well worth tracking down.