Single Cell Orchestra - Dead Vent 7

Despite the intriguing idea of setting an original short science fiction story to an all electronic soundtrack, "Dead Vent 7" mostly fails to deliver memorable music or textures, and the science fiction tale that accompanies it is too skeletal to make much of an impression.

Here's an interesting concept - you write a short script for a science fiction movie, record the dialogue and an electronic soundtrack and then just release it on CD/vinyl; it's sort of like Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds for the 90's but without the narration or the singing. :) The story follows the efforts of a team investigating the fate of a spaceship that encountered a mysterious phenomenon but the vocals are generally effect-processed and mixed to be secondary to the music and they're quite sparse at times (a transcript is provided in case you want to follow the simple plot and it only takes up three pages of the CD booklet). The music itself covers ambience - both light and dark - and broken-beat techno and does a fair job of fitting the mood of each scene. The best track is easily the third one - 13 minutes of angelic spaced-out ambience which is ideal for a more mellow chill-out set.