Far from what you might expect, ambient music is a tough sound to get right. Sure, it might sound like someone has just left the kettle boiling for too long, or merely looped the same sound for nigh on an hour, but there really is more to it than that. Brian Eno was only too well aware of this, and although he might have started a revolution with his slightly phased loops and twinkling pianos, it wasn't easy to repeat. That's not to say that there haven't been regular attempts at the style, but classic moments are punctuated blips in a mass of garbled waffle and embarrassing new-age hippy sentiment. Wolfgang Voigt's Gas project was one such blip, and in the mid to late 90s he influenced yet another wave of producers, desperate to create music which was beautiful yet never trite and relaxing without being lumped into the soiled world of post-club chill out music.

The Fun Years are a duo from New England, and are very much a part of the post-Gas ambient sound. "Baby, It's Cold Inside" is their second effort for the Barge label, but where their first was merely a good crack at a good idea, this time around they get everything right. And I mean everything, it is a rare album that manages to do all the things it set out to do and it does it without ever losing a sense of identity, something all too easy to forget, especially in experimental music. Taking the shellac-laced ideas of Philip Jeck and blending them with a Gas-eous density and overlaying the kind of dreamy guitar that might usually be attributed to My Bloody Valentine the duo create a continuous forty minutes of bliss, an album which manages to be far more than the sum of its parts. Like Christian Fennesz before them, they manage to squeeze sounds out of the guitar which might have been difficult without a few lines of machine code, but Fennesz never used his powers to create ambient music. Through five index points we travel through a hazy world, where the line between samples and live instruments is blurred irreparably and where noise is approached in the most serene way possible. The noise that appears is like a frosty sprinkling on an ice-cold morning, serving to make the music even more beautiful than it already was. It never impedes on the enjoyment of the record, and the serenity, the gorgeous harmony is always subtly placed, always delicately handled. By the time we reach the tumultuous crash of the album's final piece (which possibly justifies the obligatory MBV references) you feel like just for a moment, you could have been dislocated from the hustle and bustle of everyday life, and what would be more satisfying than that? Without a doubt the Fun Years have put together one of the finest works of 2008, don't let their relative obscurity put you off basking in their triumphant glow. 9/10 -- Dakota Block (26 November, 2008)