If you have ever seen the modern music video of The Beatles' "Free As A Bird", with it's lazy, flying camera track through windows, over roofs and trees, lethargic yaws - that is the point of view inspired in my inner cinema by Pluramon. But instead of clever digital manipulation of vintage Beatles footage, I see televisions with white noise. I see rag-doll human bodies draped over sofas and shag carpets. Everyone is wearing corduroys and no one is moving a muscle. It's even too much effort for a fly to move. The view keeps fading to white. This is lazy afternoon music. Music for the contemplation of the pattern of cracks in the ceiling above your bed. And it is rather bland and uninspiring. Imagine Kings Of Convenience mixed with Air and not really managing to move anything in you.

The entire album is very very slow and sleep-inducing. It's a mixture of acoustic and electronic pop. All the tracks seem to have been recorded with an intentional, subtle veil of white noise over it. This is evidence of Pluramon?s former jaunts into eclectic microsound and glitch. Nothing sounds crisp and the percussion is concealed. It is a very ethereal sound. I get a sense of
deja vu as I listen to this album, triggered by the fragility of the singing. The female singer?s voice floats like mist over this still pond of acoustic blah. A lot of what she says can?t be made out because her voice is so diaphanous, and what you do catch doesn?t make sense. It is voice as instrument, rather than voice as message. Then I learn why I got that sense of deja vu. The female singer is none other than Julee Cruise. Oh yes. She of the Twin Peaks soundtrack and criminally abused voice.

I like Julee Cruise; I loved her on Angelo Badalamenti?s work for Twin Peaks as well as her own work, and Pluramon ? real name, Marcus Schmickler ? has done exactly what needed to be done in order to take Julee?s trademark vocals, and turn them vapid and cheesy.

The track "Have You Seen" reminds me strongly of Cocteau Twins. The lyrics are sung as if they might disappear if you don't pay attention, with some subtle voice processing to give it more of that "dreamy" sound. It's formulaic stuff with a guitar chord opening the track with reverb added. Then in comes that white noise again, with a tambourine slapping and bass guitar rambling.

"Difference Machine" is an odd track. It is the white noise again, sounding like a plastic bag or handkerchief being rubbed against the microphone during recording. A sort of country twang guitar is playing highlights while a distorted guitar adds the body. A strange sort of organ sound hums in the background throughout the track. Then instead of the usual singer, a synthesized voice begins a rather self-contradicting speech, with each statement it makes alternating between self-improvement rhetoric and self-defeating fatalism.

Don?t waste your time. There is better ceiling contemplation music available. 2/10 -- Munir Remahl (25 May, 2005)