This release is kind of like the student who gets turned away from enrolling at high school because they don’t reside in the right zone. Can I say that? Can someone give me permission to doubt Ahilea’s candidacy round here? They’re certainly not in the correct postcode, but I’m not the principal. “Café Svetlana” turns up at your gates with undulating double-bass jogging attire but you can’t even tell if that’s some deftly triggered sampling or an actual, real instrument, accreted through unsolicited canon-like delay. Jew-harps and accordions then arrive like big brothers, getting all nice and evil so you just have to let them all on the property. The music displays its visual timeline on its sleeve; you can hear the layered template of the sequencing software – it’s that aggregated, metronomic, textually predictable and transparent. Tambourines join in on the predestined downbeat while a prescribed accordion – it’s stereo-typical in more ways than one – plays out its designated tune with automated dexterity. Bass drum and fake snare join the rhythmic sedimentation, a looped splash of synthetic accordion and faux pas tuba-type pads setting the self-aggrandizing and would-be hedonistic mood for the unneeded frivolity of the lyrics to follow: ‘Come on baby baby…come on honey yeah’. It’s embarrassingly out-of-bounds. ‘We gonna rock the house in a Balkan style’. “Café Svetlana” definitely wears a very strict uniform and I don’t wish to be all bureaucratic, but it’s just not the right one. 3/10 -- E.R. Chatterton (19 November, 2009)