This is very good music to chill out to, the ideal CD to put on in the early hours of the morning, collapsing at home after a night’s heavy clubbing. The stripped back lines of electronica mean that it’s one of those records that fills the air of a room without suffocating you in the process. The album also has a very cinematic quality. Each song paints pictures in your head; making you feel like you’ve really been somewhere afterwards. These are songs which linger (along with their imagery) in the mind long after the disc has stopped spinning.
The press release states that “The Ideal Condition is a vivid testament to the scope and sensibility of one of modern music’s most innovative and resourceful minds.” Four listens later, one is forced to agree. Clocking in at just over 40 minutes, ex-Orbital man Paul Hartnoll’s debut solo album is an object lesson in how brevity and quality can work hand in hand together. Anyone seeking old rave thrills like Chime will be disappointed. This is a more acoustic offering than Orbital’s blistering techno soundscapes. It’s like Hartnoll has said to himself “I want to move away from that”. The album’s guest collaborators clearly want to help Hartnoll, from Akazia Parker on Nothing Else Matters, to The Cure’s Robert Smith on Please. Rather than appearing tacked-on, each voice accentuates and builds on the track’s mood, giving a diversity and range to Hartnoll’s delicate acoustica.