Sometimes when we listen to new music it fires the subconscious and acts as a trigger to memories which may, on the surface, seen abstract to the sound. When the Japanese artist Tabata listened to his own latest album, it took him on a journey he hadn't experienced whilst the creative process was ongoing. Tabata contributes an interesting memoir as a sleevenote detailing his early life in Kyoto and how little music he heard. When I listened to "La Vie Electrique," my first reaction was to think of Frank Zappa's pop-art musique concrete collage style in, say, Lumpy Gravy, but what Tabata is doing is coming from another place. His parents favoured news radio and, aside from some church tunes, he heard hardly any music until he was older. Instead, his childhood attraction to sound stemmed largely from the sci-fi tv series Ultraman, where the hero would zap-pow scary monsters and buildings would collapse with a mighty crash. It's worth mentioning this as a pointer to the dramatic transitions he makes as he fuses guitar (acoustic and treated in many different ways) with Theremin, harmonica, toys and telephones. The last time I heard a Tabata album, elements of this style were in place, but the new disc has less full on noise and more light and shade, with much to discover on repeated listens. It also has an impressively strong instrumental cover of Syd Barrett's No Man's Land and, as ever with Elsie & Jack releases, the sleeve art and finish are of exemplary quality. 8/10 -- John Cavanagh (5 September, 2007)