Yoav Imagine a record matching the leftfield edge of Beck or Radiohead with the sure-footed pop hooks of Justin Timberlake. A record which vividly conjures the life of an outsider, set to the loping rhythms of Massive Attack or Portishead, built around a voice both sweetly expressive and richly soulful. Then imagine that every single sound of it, including bass & drums, is performed by one man on his guitar. That record is Yoav's Charmed & Strange. It began in Cape Town in the late 1980s, with a nine-year-old boy sneaking to his neighbour's house to listen to the "light music" which his parents banned in favour of classical and opera. By 12, Yoav was waiting until night to practice on the battered guitar his elder brother gave him. As a teenager, Yoav devoured music, from rock, to synth pop, with phases of hip-hop, grunge and electro, whilst regularly demoing his songs in local studios. These were good enough to get him invited to play in New York. At this point, Yoav's music was "conventional singer-songwriter stuff". Then one day that changed. "I'd gone with my guitar and some mushrooms into Central Park, planning to lose myself in playing. For some reason, I started banging out rhythms on my guitar and got really into it. Then this school trip of 7-year-olds suddenly started dancing. I was playing drum 'n' bass rhythms and they were whirling around me like trance hippies, like I was DJing with my guitar." Yoav had stumbled upon his new direction. "I tried to translate dance music to guitar, learning what I could do, using it as my decks. You can get kick drums and snares by hitting it in different places or a synthy sound with feedback. I went back to South Africa and played shows, making all the sounds on my own, with loop and delay pedals. The response was amazing. I knew it was time to make an album." Yoav made Charmed & Strange in Oxford and Montreal. It's a record unlike anything else around, edgy and original, but with tunes to light up daytime radio. Every note is played, teased, tapped and pounded out of his guitar. To see Yoav play live is to see a mesmerising one-man band with just his acoustic guitar and a few pedals recreating the album before your eyes.