Pop Albums: Alex Reece So Far Fourth & Broadway BRCD 621

And so to this week's drum 'n' bass offering, an above-average release from the new wunderkind of the genre, unfortunately thrown into the shade by Lewis Taylor's dazzling debut.

Reece's talent lies in bringing an easy, laidback feel to a musical style more noted for the hyperactive intensity of its rhythms.

On the best tracks, such as the single "Feel The Sunshine", he builds gently with hi-hats, adding a string pad and little bubbles of synthesiser, while Deborah Anderson's calm, Bjorky murmurs give some impression of what a putative Goldie/Bjork collaboration might sound like.

The slick "Jazz Master" features a slippery jazz hi-hat pattern tinted with trumpet and piano, and the fast, skittering house piece "Acid Lab" gives some idea of the route Reece may have taken on a journey between rave and jungle. But long before it has run its course, the album seems to have used up its fund of ideas; tracks become drawn out way beyond their natural length, and save for the occasional song such as "Candles", there is a baffling lack of focus beyond the few smudges of sampled sound that decorate the grooves.