Alias & Ehren - Lillian

With the kind of ambient electronica pioneered by the likes of Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada, the physical shackles of corporeal instrumentation can be thrown off and replaced by the blank canvas of a laptop screen. Anticon stalwart Alias and his wee brother Ehren paint bees buzzing curiously around lolloping flutework on 52nd & West, an insane trumpeter wailing away his troubles in Back and Forth, and bassed-out fuzzy foghorns trying to drown out another searching soul in Cobblestoned Waltz. Each of these highlights is an epiphany, awakening those senses dimmed by the rest of the record, for it's only at these interesting moments you realise Alias & Ehren had fallen into that aural wallpaper trap again. In the title track they'd painted a night-train, battling through thick rain and mist, lucid for forty seconds in six minutes of foggy watercolour - and that's not quite enough. [Alistair Brown]