Lawrence English's latest is a serious headphones album, not surprising coming from the head of Room 40, which puts out extremely well-crafted electronic music.

At the outset, a rumbling hum emerges from directly behind my head, and before long, digital clicks flutter from my left ear to right and back again. Later on, sounds creep out of the left channel before being joined by a centered cloud of hum and choir-like synth tones in the right channel. Panning acoustic guitar features prominently in the mid-section of "About the End" hinting at more pastoral, filtered folk.

In "Shed," distortion swells before it is undergirded by a lighter layer of expanding hiss that soon joins with it. The rhythmically panning synth tones seem like a bit of overkill given all of the drone activity within the cloud itself. Following the sparse, distorted kick drum and electrical hum of "Somewhere Inside Me is You," the moments of cleaner sine waves don't add any light.

"The Slow Weave" nearly doubles the second longest track in duration. A horn-like synth tone occupies the center of the stereo field before scraping percussive accents and slight processed strums begin to dominate. Then, a nearly choral cadence repeats, fading out and emerging again as the distortion begins to seem more guitar-like. The distorted, dissonant melody sounds almost like taps before fading out, leaving a close sine interval and static clicks.

English paces the album extremely well. Each track's length fits the elements involved, and initially, I felt that the album played it too safe with its structures and textures. Despite these misgivings, the album stuck with me, and I found myself mulling it over whether or not it was playing. Later listens revealed that I had imagined the record as more tightly controlled than it is. Like the images from Marian Drew, which depict the death of local fauna at the hands of a menacing push toward a static civilization, English's work here suggests a possible dystopian future shot through with glimpses of a different way forward. 8/10 -- Howard Martin (30 April, 2009)