On _Sculptured_, Beaumont Hannant’s third full-length, he introduces a new texture to his repertoire: vocals. Lida Husik, with whom Hannant would collaborate more frequently, offers her husky voice to the water droplets that tinkle over “Ormeau.” Hannant layers vocals as effortlessly as he does electronic lines, as “Woven Textures” demonstrates. The more instrumental tracks offer no less pleasure: “Heavenly,” with its angelic singing, lives up to its title; the funky and pleasure-inducing “Departure,” with its steel guitar, could itself be a trip to heaven. Even the minor missteps are interesting, like the hard rock guitars of “Autun” (which works better in the more sedate “In Our Lifetime”) or the awkward rap on “Toxicity.” But moments of pure beauty, like the dark reverie of “Nightride” stick in the mind the most. Essential listening for fans of IDM.

The track Ormeau is one of the most beautiful, melodic emotive pieces of electronic music I think I've ever heard. It easily stands out as his finest tune. I'm not usually much for vocals but they really make the track, coupled with the gorgeous synths and Artificial Intelligence beats.

Towards the end of 1994, a lot of artists in the IDM/electronica/ambient/electronic listening music (choose whichever term you prefer, as long as it's not the offensively smug "intelligent techno") scene were starting to diversify quite widely from the purely synthesized sounds that characterised the genre. With the success of Mo'Wax and the rapid evolution of early-1990s jungle, a lot of producers were increasingly finding inspiration outside the field of cerebral electronic music.

Beaumont Hannant, like a lot of other IDM/electronica/etc producers, had fallen in love with hip-hop and indie-rock before going on to release electronic music, and so these influences started to show through quite strongly by the time he released this, his third album for GPR.

In "Sculptured", Beaumont Hannant integrates singing, rapping and even spoken-word poetry to a major extent. Alongside human voices, guitars and live drums make an appearance, particularly on "Autun", which is essentially an indie-rock instrumental. Indie/folk singer Lida Husik appears on three tracks, while rapper Joseph Johnson and Scottish poet Geoff Beveridge feature on another three tracks between them. Only three or four of the tracks here sound similar in style to the material on Hannant's earlier albums.

The upshot is that "Sculptured" is less likely to appeal to listeners who are after music that's more typical of Hannant's earlier sound than it is to those who prefer to hear a producer revealing his full range of influences. That's not to say that "Sculptured" is an improvement on his earlier LPs, though: I for one prefer "Texturology", but you might not.