Crept up on me this one although the voice kept me away at first - silly me - even though it was better than those on ninety percent of the man woman dance electronic music release we get sent, but what was going on behind it and during the spaces held me. At some point the voice then made sense.

Mark Clifford and Sophia Hinkley are able to balance everything out, seeing to it that the instrumentation never becomes a mere backing track. This was my initial fear when the opener, Whileaway, made its way to me as the sultry lightly treated vocal drifted across a relatively uninspiring rhythm track. Then came Firehart, with it's entrancing Glass like repetitive spinet riff, droopy horn pad choruses and angelic vocals, and on again with Splinters, this time with a suitably screwed up groove and complimentary heavily treated vocals which really helped set the stage for all the really good stuff to follow.

The US release closes out with three remixes by Robin Guthrie of Cocteau Twins fame - talk about icing on the cake!

Rating: 812,400 (out of a possible 1,000,000)

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