- Kakariko are a man: Simon, and a woman: Jess; he plays the synths, sings through a vocoder and unleashes kooky electronic effects, while she enthusiastically pummels a drum kit. There’s not too much else to know about the pair and I think they like it that way: I don't even know what their last names are. Rather, they prefer to have all the focus on their musical output, which is -in a word- prodigious. Karakio have got six releases under their belt since their formation in 2013. In photos they’re both decked out like dance hippies: with his mass of dreadlocks and her pink highlights and that endless supply of electronic good-times music, I’m getting the sense that Kakariko might be some kind of latterday Spiral Tribespeople, dedicating their lives to the never ending doof. Like I said, it’s hard to tell: Kakariko is also the name of a quaint little village from the Nintendo classic Zelda And The Ocarina Of Time and those massive Google search results comprehensively obscure most information about our electronic duo.

Listening to their latest EP, the suggestively titled Speed, it’s clear that Kakariko could keep a floor full of hedonists moving. They shift from suggestion to pretty blatant illustration with the title of the lead track, alltimepartytimedrugsindahouse. You might think that this would be music without subtlety, in-your-face electro a-la Does It Offend You, Yeah? Actually, the whole boy on synth & girl on drums & insanely bright synth-pop thing made me think of the absolutely unsubtle stylings of Matt & Kim, but neither of those bands are really like Kakariko at all. With Simon’s vocoder fuzzing up his vocals and a shimmering curtain of reverb hanging over the speeding beats, everything has a dreamy, ambient texture that makes Kakariko sound like a happily head-melting blend of shoegaze and dance-pop.

The opener is one of the least medicated, but the haze grows hugely on the EP’s second track, Aeroplane, with its wistful verses, full of quiet longing for a distant loved one. Starts is completely sunk in a glowing ethereality while New Housemate Search shrugs some of the daze off with an energetic bubblegum pop style that would do Matt & Kim proud.

It’s possible that EPs are the perfect vehicle for Kakariko, taking all of this energy and psychedelic strangeness in a larger dose could turn out to be overwhelming. As it stands, Speed is a thoroughly entertaining EP: driving dance pop bathed in ethereal atmosphere is something both unusual, infectious and here, very nicely balanced.

- Chris Cobcroft.