ESP Institute Schallplatten & CDs

Review: Opal Sunn aka Alex Kassian and Hiroaki OBA are dreamers and fantasists that comes over in the inventive sounds they cook up on their first Ep for the ESP Institute label. The title track 'The Problem With George' kicks off and is a dense and prickly affair. Jittery synth lines and restless snares, dubs of deep space colour and droplets of melody all make for a nebulous cacophony that tugs and pull in different directions at once. 'The Mystery Of Mr Lee' is a little more settled with its silky space house grooves and meditative chords.

Review: You wait ages for a Lord of the Isles album, and two come along at once! 'Night of the Endless Beyond', the Scottish producer's second full-length excursion for ESP Institute, follows hot on the heels of the inspired (if shorter) 'Subtle Thoughts' on Lapsus. While that was almost entirely made up of typically atmospheric ambient sketches, this epic goes further, complimenting his usual beat-free brilliance with forays into dubbed-out, deep space ambient techno ('Endless Beyond'), analogue-rich emotive techno (the star-fall brilliance of 'Strato'), ambient house ('Together' and the wonderfully trippy 'Quadralogue'), crackly IDM ('Truth') and picturesque, soft-focus dancefloor hypnotism ('Wonder').