After the sprawling ambient opus that was their debut LP, Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld, The Orb voyaged into new interstellar realms for the follow-up. The languid rippling soundscapes and far-out samples persisted, but Dr Alex Patterson and Thrash introduced uptempo beats to the brew, lending the album a chunkier, less meandering feel which was reflected in its commercial success. "Blue Room" was the longest single in history at a touch under 40 minutes long, while the centrepiece was the staggering "Towers Of Dub", which married abstract electronica with some of the mightiest bass this side of Kingston. An LP which sees The Orb at the peak of their tripped-out talents, before their later slide into a self-indulgent, sonic miasma. -Ed Potton An ambient-techno classic, UFOrb captures Alex Patterson and his sonic henchman at their early peak. While the Orb had already created a dance-floor and chill-out-room sensation in 1991 with Little Fluffy Clouds, this follow-up disc displays Patterson's talent for fusing ambient music with dub science and a club culture mindset. Incorporating psychedelicized samples over the era's reigning techno beats and deep reggae bass lines, heady compositions such as "Towers of Dub" and "Close Encounters" are excessive in length but consistently entertaining. The album's highlight is an 18-minute version of "Blue Room" (there's a 40-minute version out there, too), which features the sensual bass playing of Jah Wobble and the oscillating guitar of coproducer Steve Hillage. A most serious contribution to the legacy of the modern DJ. -Mitch Myers.

Beautifully crafted and produced, When It Falls is a fitting follow-up to Zero 7's 2001 platinum hit Simple Things. Reintroducing several of their debut's guest vocalists, the band continue to meld subtle orchestras, elegant jazz and easy-going West Coast soul and folk, creating a sound so tasteful it makes Morcheeba sound like Napalm Death. The album opens with the appropriately titled "Warm Sound", where long-time collaborator Mozez delivers his spacey soul over a quivering flute and funky keys. Later he reappears for the string-swept lullaby "Over Our Heads". Next up is newcomer Tina Dico who lends the softest of vocals to "Home", where quietly chiming guitars rise to a careful collision of brass, and "The Space Between", a techno-update of 70s folk-jazz. Much the same service is provided by Sophie Barker on "Passing By" and "In Time", which recalls the sweet innocence of early James Taylor. It's left to Sia Furler to add extra colour, her slight rasp lending character to both "Somersault" and "Speed Dial No 2". Throughout, the band introduce a welter of instruments and effects, sometimes approaching the psychedelic, though they're keen to avoid an over-technological coldness-the squeak of finger on guitar string is never far away. For fans of Simple Things, it's a real treat. -Dominic Wills.

People get excited about the prospect of a new Boards Of Canada album, and The Campfire Headphase again confirms exactly why. Coming just two years after Geogaddi-a blink of an eye, in Boards terms-this, the Scots duo's third full length LP unfurls 15 tracks of languid, warm, but strangely absorbing soundscapes of eddying beats and trilling synth. Lighter in tone than Geogaddi, the likes of "Satellite Anthem Icarus" replace Boards' eerie undercurrents with a brighter, more optimistic moods. New too is the presence of guitar, albeit often of the heavily-treated variety: "Constants Are Changing" hides ringing acoustic chords in a whirlpool of woozy keyboard wash, while "Hey Saturday Sun" loops a strange, cyclical melody that's nicely complemented by some thrumming synthetic bass lines. Mind you, the album stand-outs hail from a firmly electronic base-see "Oscar See Through Red Eye", which emerges from an ambient cocoon and gradually evolves into a distant cousin of acid house, dry handclaps and psychedelic digital blips dotted in the warm sonic mulch. Perhaps there's not enough fresh here to confirm Boards Of Canada as cutting-edge sonic trailblazers, but as ever, their familiarity remains a strong part of their appeal, and The Campfire Headphase confirms that their quality threshold remains way up there. -Louis Pattison.

"Dead Skin Cells", "Cerebral", "Spineless Jelly": the song titles on the second full-length from U. K. duo Future Sound of London (a. k. a. Gary Cobain and Brian Dougans) almost read like chapter subheadings from a Biology textbook. And not without reason. Evolving beyond the florid environmental techno of their previous Accelerator and the hit single "Papua New Guinea", Lifeforms concentrates on Future Sound of London's painstaking construction of tiny, crystalline arrangements of organic sound. Guest stars include Curve's Toni Halliday, percussionist Talvin Singh and guitar pioneer Robert Fripp, but you'll be as hard pressed to identify their individual contributions once they've been diced and folded into the mix. Too animated to be tagged "ambient", yet not as propulsive as earlier Future Sound of London offerings, the intricate charms of Lifeforms proliferate with repeated listenings. [+]

Admittedly, 18 isn't a million style miles away from its predecessor, but this can only be a good thing. If it ain't broke (and let's face it, Play was a pretty hole-free record all told), then don't fix it. Hence the dominance here of Moby's heartbreaking way with strings, pianos and those sampled gospel vocals he's so cleverly made his own. "In My Heart" is familiar territory: a mournful blues voice sat astride the epic swell of military drums and tear jerking symphonia, while further tales of love gone bad surface on the bass-driven "One of These Mornings" and the subtle house simmer of "Another Woman". Is there anyone else out there that can do grief you can dance to? Thankfully "We Are All Made of Stars" does shed a little optimism, and there are some cool collaborations here too. Sinead O'Connor lends fragile breath to "Harbour" while MC Lyte and Angie Stone bring sassiness to the funky hip-hop anthem, "Jam for the Ladies". Welcome back, little man. -Claude Walls.

Lemon Jelly is a new addition to the pantheon of leftfield downtempo classics, a group to file alongside Air, Kid Loco and every Café Del Mar album so far. Lemonjelly. ky is actually a collection of the Lemon Jelly duo's three EPs so far. This album echoes with the ghosts of lost 1950s easy listening icons, plundering some of the daftest samples this side of a De La Soul record, rippling with a lavish, sun-kissed tropical aura. This is music so special you'll want to throw open all your windows every time you hear it. There's a wonderful childishiness about much here: the story-time voices, the Bagpuss breaks, the nostalgic whimsy for an age when music was utterly free of pretensions or pensiveness. "His Majesty King Raam" and "In The Bath" serve up a warm comedy that's wry, affecting and utterly compelling. "The Staunton Lick" and "Kneel Before Your God" raise the tempo to a funky slouch. And when it's all over, you'll be left wondering whether there'll ever be room in your heart for anything else. This is essential. [+]

Goldfrapp's Black Cherry inhabits a dark alley, bristling with urban menace and throbbing with a deep electronic pulse-a far cry from their breezy debut, which gently led the listener to a fairytale aural utopia occupied by Parisian pop, whistling divas and baroque masters. Having given up the countryside for a neon-lit studio, Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory have infused Black Cherry with an intensity and brooding claustrophobia that's both exuberant and sensual. Simultaneously mellifluous and mechanical, tracks such as "Train" with its fiery industrial rhythm steer Goldfrapp dangerously close to the ailing electro-clash scene, before veering back to more familiar territory with the likes of the sultry, downbeat "Black Cherry" and languid dreamy ambience of "Forever". Elsewhere our Hampshire-bred heroine gets deep down and dirty on "Twist", an ode to oral that finds Goldfrapp waxing lyrical to a fierce driving Kraftewerk-esq synth: "Before you go and leave this town/I want to see you one more time/ put your dirty angel face/ between my legs and make it last. No Felt Mountain to get lost in, but at least there's "Hairy Trees" to make up for it. -Christopher Barrett.

Blame Tricky and Portishead. They started this whole Bristol sound thing, with sleepy techno beats overshadowed by the chirrupy vocals of some slumberland chanteuse. And, just when you think the approach has lost all its steam, all its relevance, along comes a new outfit to make the music a few degrees sleepier and the singing a tad more dreamy. And singers don't come any dreamier than Skye Edwards, whose lissom trill infuses every track on this sophomore outing with a tranquil ennui. You don't jump around to Morcheeba numbers like "The Sea". You sit back and let them creep up on you, as steady as the tides. -Tom Lanham.

Moon Safari, the first album proper by this pair of middle-class Frenchmen, easily survives unscathed from its billing as that most deadly of sub-genres: dinner party music. True, Moon Safari, with its blatant bliss-provoking easy listening chimes, sits well beside Everything But the Girl's Walking Wounded or Portishead's Dummy, but the album is steeped in too much musical verve and gallic humour to become as dull as Chardonnay. "Sexy Boy", the first single, is a rock-out slab of electronica about a toy monkey, for instance-hardly the thing to discuss in polite society. This album's highs come with their two marriages with the contributing vocals of American Beth Hirsch. "All I Need" and "You Make It Easy" are shockingly successful, with Hirsch bringing gravitas and sincerity, flagging the album with strong emotional pointers in the midst of their musical adventures. If you didn't know, you'd think her words were sampled from a lost jazz classic-that's how good this record sounds. -Charlie Porter.

By the late 1990s Vienna production duo Richard Dorfmeister and Peter Kruder had firmly established themselves as remixers par excellence, selecting key elements of other people's compositions and rebuilding them in their unique framework, which saw a collusion of Latin, dub and bossa. This outing on K7 collates their finest works in a double CD set, and though compiled in the spirit of DJ Kicks retains much of each track with the mixing itself barely noticeable as the material segues gently from outtro to intro. All of their best work is here, from the opening strains of Kruder's take on Roni Size's "Heroes" right through to the closing washes of "Million Town," highlights taking the form of a breathtaking, space aged dub of Depeche Mode's "Useless" and "Trans Fatty Acid" from Lamb, which weaves Louise Rhodes' angelic vocal into a sprawling, live groove. Fascinating late-night listening. -Kingsley Marshall.

Austrians Peter Kruder and Richard Dorfmeister, whose smooth and sexy acid jazz has attracted almost as much attention as their curious resemblance to American folksters Simon and Garfunkel, demonstrate their skills on yet another instalment of Studio K7's DJ Kicks series. The mix highlights the best of European trip-hop, acid jazz, and drum and bass, with their own "High Noon" and "Black Baby" mixed with tracks from British trip-hoppers Herbalizer, German technicians Hardfloor, and Viennese weirdo Patrick Pulsinger, among others. Their straightforward mixing is complemented by a heavy dose of studio postproduction but the emphasis here is on track selection rather than technical trickery. Like their productions, this DJ Kicks is classy, sophisticated, and surprising. -Matthew Corwine.

You might expect the debut album from a woman who has collaborated extensively with Tricky and Orbital to be both wondrous and strange-and you'd be right to. What you might not expect is quite the depth of Alison Goldfrapp's beguiling, distracting 21st-Century noir visions on Felt Mountain. She and her fellow composer Will Gregory can mix in Brechtian cabaret, classical instrumentation, left-of-field electronics, decadent Gainsbourg-style French pop and the odd piece of whistling on just one track ("Felt Mountain"). "Oompa Radar" almost reaches Tom Waits heights of infamy, the way familiar instruments come together in such a simultaneously comforting and alienating style. The baroque "Paper Bag", meanwhile, uncannily recalls Joe Meek's toytown visions of 1960's grandeur. All this, and a seductive vocal to die for. -Everett True.

Melody AM, the debut from Norwegian outfit Royksopp, is widely being touted for "classic" status. Far from "just another chill-out" album, this is a richly textured feast of warm, late-night food for the soul. The songs seem to reflect the extremes of the environment they were produced in-the sorrowful "She's So", a tribute to almost 24-hour winter darkness of Royksopp's motherland, and the lilting warmth of "Royksopp's Night Out", a literal dance in the midnight sun. In the tradition of bands such as Air and Groove Armada, this is a sound that could almost make it to the dance floor-if it could bear to leave the comfort of the sofa behind. The infectious "Poor Leno" hints at what their dance productions (and they do exist) might sound like, and as a whole, Melody AM will leave you wanting to get your hands on anything and everything else "the 'Sopp" have ever touched. -Ruby Tuesday.

The Best of Groove Armada charts the success of one of the UK's most popular dance acts. Featuring the biggest hits from their last three albums, this anthology of their time on the Jive label is packed with downbeat and upbeat anthems, and an array of music as heard in film, television and radio. The subdued intro and trombone melody of "Superstylin" opens the collection softly with the now legendary bassline kicking in for a perfect euphoric moment. Other upbeat anthems include the piano house of "If Everybody Looked the Same", the Fatboy Slim mix of Gramma Funk's "I See You Baby" (both of which have been used to sell cars) and the more recent disco hit, "Easy". However, although Tom Findlay and Andy Kato pack dance floors every weekend, it's their downbeat soul that receives most attention, partly due to the "chillout" explosion of 2000 that made "At the River" a classic of the genre. With their last album Lovebox, GA showed a more versatile, band-influenced side with songs like the Status Quo sampling "Purple Haze", the rocky "Madder" and fun-loving ska of "But I feel Good". The Best of Groove Armada is a great selection of songs showing the diversity and musical progression of the band, a perfect introduction for the un-initiated and a good collection for those already converted. -Georgina Collins.

The great iconoclast of techno returns with a smooth, sacred and exhilarating record. Play's concoction of breakbeat rhythms, ambient mixology and inspired blues and gospel samples cry out across musical genres and histories, imparting a time-tested wisdom to beat-driven ears. Moby's devout faith-in both God and his own musical whims-give this approach a sort of legitimacy that another, less sincere artist would never have. That sincerity reverberates through the beats and instrumental eclecticism like a pulse. The soulful refrains and proclamations in "Find My Baby" and "Natural Blues" somehow nestle between straight-up dance-floor rave-ups ("Bodyrock") and melt-in-your-mouth ambience ("Inside") with an effortless grace. Moby reaches across his turntables and finds something pure-almost organic. In fact, the album feels more natural than techno is ever supposed to feel, more spiritual than DJs are supposed to be able to muster and more alive than it has any right to be. Check out the spellbinding compilation Natural Blues to hear the original source material from blues and spiritual singers such as Etta James, Vera Hall and BB King. -Matthew Cooke.