At 76 minutes the first solo disc of Skull Defekts member Jean-Louis Huhta is quite a monster in size and maybe a bit too long. However, Huhta manages to leave only very few gaps which makes the CD an overall positive listen. Next to the Skull Defekts, Huhta is also involved in some other interesting projects, especially a ?lounge? band together with Graham Lewis (bass player of Wire) and CM von Hausswolff. As a solo artist he crafts what comes closes to the genre ?post-rock?.

It?s not easy picking out certain tracks, there are no stand-outs, but hardly any real misses either, except for some of the more industrial tracks around tracks 11 and 12. On the others, Huhta modulates his melodies back and forth a lot which leads to an exaggerated monotony at times. Some tracks could be shortened to half of their length. Long tracks should be long if an artist needs time to develop a theme over a certain course of time. But when a track is simply repetetive, I don?t see the point in extending it to six or seven minutes.

Other tracks like ?Suddenly There is a Change? or ?Straight to You? on the other hand have the development that justifies a few minutes more. Especially on the latter one, Huhta manages well to build up layer after layer of sound and create a nice and mellow loungy post-rock tune. More of these and less fuzzing around would have made ?Halfway? an above average album. It?s worth a listen this way too though. 6/10 -- Stephan Bauer (5 December, 2007)