George Pringle. Salon des Refuses (2009).

Connoisseurs of electronic music might scoff at her canned beats and off kilter MIDI programming, but George definitely has it - I just don't know what "it" is.

There are four CDs in my car right now, Immolate Youself by Telefon Tel Aviv, Pop Ambient 2007, and 2008, and Salon des Refusés by George Pringle. Today I was listening to Row by Thomas Brinkmann on my iPod, but the CD I can't stop playing again and again from the beginning is the one by Ms. Pringle.

It's hard to pinpoint exactly what it is that makes George Pringle so different, so appealing. Her clap-trap drum tracks won't give Xenomania any sleepless nights. She can sing, but hardly ever does, preferring to deliver her lyrics/stories as monologues with F. Scott Fitzgerald's powers of social critique. Her mind is like a closet stacked with overflowing shoe boxes full of trivia and details, you pull one out and the rest tumble down. But it's more poetry than stream of consciousness I hear. It must be the voice: an upscale, cynical, yet vulnerable instrument she uses to depict her tales of observation and loneliness.

The last year has revealed a raft of electropoplettes, and some are quite good, but I don't recall any of them being described with the words, "outsiderness" and "self-parody," as the Independent did when discussing George.

She first got attention on Myspace, which, if you do music, and are actually making an effort to get noticed there, is (as some of you must have found out by now) virtually impossible (although it's happened a couple of notorious times). George has pretty much gone it alone, using the built-in mic on her Mac to record tracks all by her lonesome on GarageBand, releasing her own record and getting gigs without a booking agent. She's been subsequently profiled in such high-profile journals such as The Independent, The Guardian, and The Times (London). This is the type of exposure you don't get just because you're a girl doing music on your own.  You have to stand out from the crowd, and she does.  I was thinking of contacting La Pringle for an interview, but then I found this, and realized I couldn't do it any better myself. It even includes embedded videos, so I won't bother posting any here - just give it a click, please.