Dif Juz

IT'S ALMOST a shock to be confronted by an LP of music with no fanfare of hyperbole or barked commands to Be Hip! Consume! Dif Juz creep quietly in, leave a deposit of sound and slip quietly away again. The exclamation mark is in their understatement.

Most of the nine pieces here are tightly structured yet subtly shifting columns of music. Despite the unfortunate dental connotations of the title, Dif Juz are never painful. Equally, they're never exciting but teeter just on the right side of indulgence to be insidiously amiable.

This, their first full-length LP, is produced by Cocteau Twin Robin. Twin Liz sings on the only non-instrumental track. I shivered in anticipation of her luscious larynx casting spectral shades across these accommodating textures. Alas, 'Love Insane' – on which she guests – is a stinker. It has a sax bursting out at all the wrong angles and a piano which tangles with the vocal, eventually mincing it to shreds.

It's a shame that this mess spreads a measure of Karmic debris across the general mood, shattering the glacier-paced calm and Eno-esque discreet-ion in evidence elsewhere.

Almost a very nice record. But not quite.