Take my hand and let me lead you into the sparse and unsettling wilderness. You'll be cold, but you can bring your coat, so long as you don't wear it. The rain will stop in a few hours, and you'll soon dry out in the freezing midnight winds. Just don't look confused, or you won't be allowed here again.

Welcome, my friends, to the vacuous and hostile desert of experimental ambience. By ambience, I mean uber-dance in its loosest sense; overlong, underambitious, and built around the kind of noises that you'd usually find on a fruit machine. By experimental, I refer to the fact that it's as yet undefined whether Volume 2 is a genuine labour of love for one of the new generation of one-man hit machines, or a wry-eyed attempt to scam a record buying public in search of evermore difficult and tangled cred-enhancing kicks.

It's hard to appreciate that the man behind Volume 2, Echoboy himself, is a certain Richard Warren, frontman of 1997 critic's darlings The Hybirds, who saw out their time with glowing reviews and a support slot with the bewilderingly popular Seahorses, to the sound of mop-topped cheers and raising of frothy beer mugs.

It's even harder to imagine that this record would be anything other than a jagged foray into the more unlistenable side of experimentalism.

And today, I have the unpleasant task of not needing to use my imagination atall.

Echoboy is also the man who politely declined the offer from a certain Noel Gallagher to join his unassuming beat combo. From that alone, it may not be foolhardy to assume that Mr.Warren has a certain degree of taste; but then again, half of the original members of Oasis won't be seen dead near Oasis anymore. But press on we must; the moon is rising, and the wolves of underground trance will devour our sceptical carcassess unless we run through the unchartered and cacti-spattered savannah.

The intention must be there. Last year's Volume One was a promise of originality and variation, and the beginning of a new career for a talented and passionate frontman. But a promise means nothing unless it is delivered, and here's the proof. Turning On's sub New-Order ramblings find little in the way of melody or songsmithry to play with, much like the Parklife era Blur B-sides of Siobhan and Schram and Sheddle 262. Sudwestfunk No.5 redresses the balance with its cocktail of hard beats, infectious rhythm and lowdown bluesy guitar, but the incessant repetition of a child's garbled phrase in Kelly's Truck is more an exercise in stretching out 10 seconds worth of original material to four and a half minutes of irritating inanity than anything to do with music. We mustn't blame the child for this evil; Super-concentrated, 99% fat free, and laced with vitamins, iron, and the kind of inanity that could drive rodents from the sewers. And it's sad but unsurprising to discover that the majority of this record is based around the same sorry formula.

Volume 2 is a frustratingly difficult record; even Captain Beefheart would fling off his headphones in contempt. There is talent on display here; to select these complicated rhythms and beats and cross-reference them will all manner of chrome-plated effects is not an easy task. But wailing cats over a pseudo intellectual electronica soundscape have never been compelling, no matter how much work is involved. Kraftwerk must be turning in their cryogenically-frozen time capsules.

Somewhere along the line, things have spiralled out of control for Echoboy and landed him in the depths of Emporer's new Clothes-ville, just south of our beloved desert of discontent.

So clutch my hand and let me lead you back to tunestown. And if you stumble here again, be careful in your choices and beware of the ghoul of self-indulgent tripe.

Don't be fooled for a second.

4/10 Karl Cremin.

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