Some faint, shrill digital mulch enters and starts to mill around, setting the scene for an excursion into any number of intricately fuzzed-out flat-line landscapes. The loop is pleasant and keeps you riding along until more forthright swells and pulses start to invade the scene. Doing reviews in real-time is weird. This is silvery static, a real late-night dirge into broken software and fragile ears, a sort of narrow tube through which metallic motes and sharp, hot flushes are filtered by the gradual implication of shifts in the overall mix. The changes in the underlying loops are intricate, slow and almost imperceptible ? yet the feeling is sometimes undesirably invaded by clumsy, oscillating invasions of non-tone. It?s a humble recording though ? it doesn?t try to make any big statements and is clearly content to pulsate gently through your head. The mix is good; tiny and insect-like to start with, then the static slowly winds itself round the sides and back of your skull ? and yet the extra clumsy swishing statements don?t seem to add anything to the mood of the piece. What could have been a very careful and precise excursion into fragmented digital half-noise is instead fettered by gasps of sounds that trip over the underlying feel of the piece instead of augmenting it. The shift in the first track into a more rhythmic procession of waves punctuated by clangs and high drones delivers interesting variation, but perhaps without the necessary total envelopment that the first half hinted at. Despite this, it moves along with an attractive precariousness, like bellows blowing metal particles through a broken speaker, and there?s enough textural development to keep you attached, if not very excited.

The second half begins even more quietly than the first, and again that humble attachment to sounds just the other side of silence draws you closer to the faint fragility of the music. This is more a broadcast lost in space, now and then getting drawn into orbit by some gravitational pull, shined on by ultra high-pitched wisps of tone. Those tones do start to grate though. It?s frustrating because the whole thing has got a nice personality and simply offers itself to your ears ? the down side of this is that at the same time it?s too meek and safe to be anywhere near as intriguing or beguiling as it could be. Shame. 5/10 -- Evan Rhodes (3 January, 2007)