7) Now here: beginning is cool. I like the chords. What an interesting montage. I like the bells too. Curious to see how or if these elements ever resolve. Ahh! Around 2 mins in they do. Very nice. Some really quiet and subtle stuff in here. Me likes. The ending is a bit abrubt. 8) Abstractions: What an apropos name. Crunchy again. I like that element. Ack! That bassline is atrocious. And then all of the sudden its gone. Am starting to write this song off as a loss. Hrm well the annoying bassline is only there for a second and I like this emotive vocal sample. Ok so it's not a total loss. Again, rather abrupt ending... 9) LUCA - orbish, but not so impressive. Oh wait it changes in the middle. Better now. 10) Compania: Reminds me of BoC kinda. I like this one. Its a good interlude track, altho it seems rather ill-placed at this point in the album. 11) Tower 23. Not bad. I don't mind it, but I don't love. I'm surprised people are complaining about the harmonica sample. I mean, sure it's an obvious towers of dub reference, but it's also used in a different way. Just a short sample. 12) Dilmun: This is my favorite track on the album so far. Atmospheric and beatless. Pretty and awash in synths. This track is very relaxing. Me likes a lot! All in all, my complaints are thus: The songs don't all have very well defined beginnings or endings. And not like with UFOrb where they all bleed together. Its just like they couldn't decide how to edit the thing down and so went with the path of least resistance. There is no unifying thread which draws the whole album together, but I feel also that this is appropriate for a CD which is not a DJ mix. I mean sure it would be cool if they all blended together, but these tracks are so divergent that it wouldn't lend itself well to that. All in all I think it's a fair effort from alex et al. Given the complaints in here I had imagined it would sound like a bunch of cats being strangled inside a huge echo-filled gymnaseum. But I don't think it's half bad. Maybe it's not as good as Adventures or some of the early stuff, but I've seen this group through other permutations I didn't like (Eg: pomme fritz) only for them to surprise me in the future. I have very high hopes for the MadOrb album, and there are certainly some tracks on here which I like a lot. Bring on the remix 12"s!!! I want to see what these tracks do when used as starting points rather than end points. _________________________________________________________________ Protect your PC - get McAfee.com VirusScan Online http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963