(cd/cd-rom, Ntone, NinjaTune)
Riz Maslen produced some of the most bass-heavy music of the nineties under the name Neotropic. Yet in spite of her talent as a producer her brand of trip hop/techno failed to really seduce, there was just something too abstract about her music. Something which has definitely changed on the quite remarkable La Prochaine Fois, her new album that also soundtracks her own ambient road movie of the same title (included here as a separate CD-ROM). As with most good albums these days an ambivalent feeling pervades La Prochaine Fois. Not only does the music escape easy categorisation - is it techno? dub? trip hop? ambient? - it also has a distinct broken feeling. One could best name this music something like pastoral techno, that enchanting strain of British techno that runs from Aphex Twin through Ultramarine to Boards of Canada, characterised by a quiet outdoor feeling, a certain melancholy also of hearing as a child again.

On La Prochaine Fois these pastoral tendencies are made apparent by the quiet touches of acoustic guitar Nick McCabe plays on 'Train to Katoomba' and 'The Man Who Catches Clouds, the dreamy strings, the drifting voices that run throughout the album or the wordless singing on the stunning 'Closer to the Sun'. But not everything is careless childhood remembrance, in fact the album takes awhile to reach its inner pastoral core: the first half being a much darker affair - shadowy, brooding, on the edge - musically something like a weird, clicking offshoot of dub. Even ex-Swans chanteuse Jarboe makes an appearance on the spectral 'Cornershop Candy'. Meanwhile the symphonic stabs of 'Money for Old Rope' shimmer with that fear one feels as a child when you are certain the woods are filled with dark mysteries. Indeed the album in its switching between sombre moods and childlike wonder sometimes evokes memories of This Mortal Coil, maybe best exemplified on 'Micro-Cosmic', an amazing reworking of Low's 'Do You Waltz' that starts with a doleful voice before soft piano-notes shine with the sublime joy of youth.