This is worth buying for Elegia's 'Way Form 3' alone--it's a beautiful, yearning track, with an astonishing bassline, sweeping strings, pure chords, intricate percussion loops, and lovely (indecipherable) vocals: perfect for a cold, private morning. But Llorca's 'Expectations' is excellent too, and Jori Hulkkonen, Alex Kid, and A Reminscent Drive's offerings are better than average. The compilation is let down by a couple of the tracks (in particular the awful 'A Tribute'), but since as far as I know you can't get 'Way Form 3' anywhere else you'll just have to buy it regardless.

You might notice as you read comments on individual Plaid releases that even Plaid's fans can't really make up their minds about what's good and what's not. This is because Plaid are artists of such sophistication that it usually takes months of listening before you know what they're up to with a given album; sometimes you never find out, but return, perplexed, over and over again. Their four albums are very different and at first each seems seriously flawed, though with enough gems among the rubble to redeem it. After a while you realise that in fact it's largely gems and very little rubble, and after that there's just no calling it between the albums. (How many other artists have no undisputed best album or best couple of albums?) You just don't find depth like this in much electronic music--Plaid can really do things with sound.

This really sucks. Bryan plays everything way too fast (mistakenly taking high tempos to be an adequate substitute for classy setlists) and from the sounds of it, he and his MCs (Darrison, Stamina, and Tali) slapped it off without any care, thought, or concentration. The mixing's shoddy (including the odd mobile DJ stylee fade out-fade in without any attempt to make the tracks gel, and at one point a stray high-hat brought in out of time and then faded out again before being brought in properly about two minutes later); the MC's efforts are really pretty insulting (sample: "Yes yes, oui oui, si si, two zero zero three, the mix cd from Bryan Gee" - I paid fifteen quid for this!); and the tracks are pretty lame too. The good ones (MIST's '3am', Ruffstuff & LJ's 'Soulshine') are worth having, but perhaps not played at this speed and with such terrible MCing over them. Give it a miss - if you want the sound of Movement, get Marky's Brazilian Job CD instead.

This is a truly wonderful album. Themes and variations wind their way across each song, and yet each song has its own distinctive texture and feel, from the slightly frenzied 'Leg Show' to the haunting 'Relief'. Faultless.

Jay Alanski's best EP - almost the perfect record. 'Sitting Quietly, Doing Nothing' and 'Equal Rights' are particularly brilliant.