LAIKA: “Silver Apples Of The Moon” (Too Pure)

Coming from the same label that brought us P.J. Harvey and Stereolab, the omens were good for Laika; my expectations were increased by the excellent cover resplendent with a couple of 1962 Albanian postage stamps (an excellent year for them it has to be said) and it’s not every band that can boast a Hot Press Single of the Week among its accolades. I hurled the CD into the machine, my breath well and truly baited.

And then? What a bummer! Silver Apples Of The Moon ambles along, apparently intent in the knowledge that if the remorseless rhythmic shuffle and airy fairy flute frolics don’t get you, the marimbas surely will. Admittedly listening to this album in the midst of a Dublin winter with the flu breeding down my throat isn’t the most appropriate environment to appreciate the finer points of a record which might just have the potential to be huge along the beaches and in the nightclubs of Rio de Janeiro but you’d need to be on some exotic drug and/or under severe hypnosis to enjoy Silver Apples Of The Moon around these parts.

A disappointment.

• Nicholas G. Kelly