PANACEA | PRESS

" Pluggin some kind of gap between Quite Sane, Bjork, and Kaidi Tatham, it's the timely return of wunderking Robert (the dark scientist) Mitchell with the whitehot 'Quantum EP' .This is the super heavy shit - dark matter designed in Mitchell's secret laboratory deep undeground as a musical slap upside all our heads.Robert, if you didn't know,is a mindblowingly good piano player. His compositions are intricate to the extreme, and he has a reputation for providing his fellow musicians with some of the most challenging music available, not a problem for consumate talent like Richard Spaven, Mike Mondesir, Barak Schmool, Volker Strater, and Deborah Jordan though. These stunning new works present Mitchell in a sonic change of clothes. The familiar timbe of the piano heard on Quite Sane,JLife and the previous Panacea album ' Voyager ' has been supplemented by electric keyboards, which combined with Spaven's jazz-funk drumming,marks the final and complete shattering of any restraints imposed by straight-ahead jazz expectants. All four tracks are superb, if angular , songs, with Deborah's delicate voice offsetting Mitchell's evocative string arrangements to a tee . Available through the www.f-ire.com website for £5.50, that's four masterworks at £1.37 and a haypennt each! If nothing has been truly scatching that hard-to-reach itch of late, this is the one to get. Trrrrrrrust.

[ Straight No Chaser]