Wild Beasts have always been fantasists: four young men from UK who, finding the humdrum world around them wanting, escaped through the back of their wardrobes to explore other universes. Their 2008 debut ‘Limbo, Panto’ invented its own playground of archaic, dandyish guitar-pop. 2009’s ‘Two Dancers’ upped the ante with its paeans to caddish courting and knee-tremblers down back alleys. And 2011’s ‘Smother’ saw them replaying memory tapes of lost loves, endlessly self-flagellating and cut off from reality.
 Real life, though, can’t be ignored forever. With ‘Present Tense’, Wild Beasts have waved in the modern world for the first time. Tom Fleming has spoken of how this time round, they worked less in isolation, spending studio sessions flicking through YouTube videos or chuckling at dog memes, welcoming in a bit of 21st century noise. The result is an LP that feels more in sync with contemporary music than ever before. There are notes here of Oneohtrix Point Never, Clams Casino, and Tim Hecker. Crucially, though, ‘Present Tense’ roams a landscape which couldn’t have been charted by anyone else.