What's in a name? For twenty-seven year old Wakefield-based studio boffin James Mabbett, it's pretty much everything.

Just as Get Cape, Wear Cape Fly transformed Sam Duckworth from Southend solo artist to celestial songsmith, so Napoleon IIIrd allows Mabbett to transcend geography and create in a world where the Flaming Lips reign supreme, psych-pop harmonies come by Royal decree and a song isn't complete without a seductive squiggle of synthesisers.

So what do we know? A regular fixture on the local live scene over the last couple of years — he is closely affiliated to New Yorkshire luminaries ¡Forward Russia! and iLiKETRAiNS, and lives a few doors down from the Research — Mabbett's live shows have become the kind of events you dream of stumbling across. Tired of the restrictions which come with being a solo artist on a zero-budget, his shows are, instead, dissonant adventures in sound which regularly find him playing three instruments at once, whilst a reel-to-reel machine throbs away in the background. His two EPs to date, meanwhile, have sold out thanks to panic buying amongst star-struck lo-fi fans worldwide.

So far, so intriguing.

Yet none of this really prepares you for the low-key genius of debut album In… read more »