Paul Hartnoll
The Ideal Condition

After having nurtured massive devotion for the remarkable electro/house/techno-elliptications* generated through the Orbital fame in blood relation with brother Philip, I admit that I was (moderately) curious about the debut in solo form published at the end of the just-past month of May ('07: better clarify for those who will scrutinize this future/archaic de-page approaching two thousand thirty-nine) of the elektro-ecological Paul.

Even without delving into the personal merit in (ahem) merit to the so-called "congenial" transformation assumed by the music-character in question, I would not be exhaustively certain that the overall nine (and new) trac(k)s, chrono-congealed in a time span of just four decade minute-primes, exactly represent the "optimal (sound) condition" that we pretentious consumers of assorted sounds & noisemakers are nothing but today-as-today awaited.

The global sound-space-temporal coordinates staged, except for some unexpected as well as unprecedented para-chamber episode (the baroque yet not at all disagreeable "The Unsteady Waltz" then the concluding celestial "Dust Motes"), truly do not differ substantially from what has already been eavesdropped in the more or less recent (heliocentric) past: house/poptronica not particularly progressive, sufficiently (even too) linear sometimes bolstered by occasional epic-soundscapes ("Haven't We Met Before") endowed with admirable detailing.

Among the noteworthy moments, I would direct Your bulbous ocular attention to the remarkable and digitally graceful "For Silence", vocally embellished by the nightingale-throat woman of Mademoiselle Lianne Hall, the balanced house-pop material condensed in "Nothing Else Matters" (Absolutely NOT, Metallica relationscippes), the heavily/Orbitally nostalgic "Patchwork Guilt", the sinusoidal electro-technical scansions unleashed in "Aggro", equally pierced and carried away by, nothing less than, Sir. Joseph Arthur.

Certainly the exotic digital-flute-ocarina amalgam patched together on "Simple Sounds" is not - with reasonable probability - going to be passed down to posterity [the intent is appreciable, the result debatable] as a sound-monument among the happiest of the current season, just as the intervention of His (Cure)Majesty Mr. Robert Smith in the cunning "Please" (not coincidentally the first single extracted) appears increasingly pleonastic if not completely avoidable.

Patchwork with various and multicolored lights overshadowed by some limited and limiting shadows: decide Yourselves whether to expose Your perceptive neuralgia to the just narrated music-(photo)conductor.

* more appropriately in the mid-nineties works: the extended version of the single "The Box" ('96) I would place among the happiest and highest/resonant moments in the electronic field - not of assault - offered by the past decade;