It seems that rule number one for any aspiring musician who wishes to form a band in Bristol MUST go through the trip-hop phase - or else.
It seems like a lifetime since the last Portishead album, or indeed since either Massive Attack or Tricky made anything remotely listenable (and no, I haven't heard his latest offering), and with it went Clevedon's fifteen minutes of fame as the epicentre of cool.
Ilya, then, provide a slight relief from the daily digestion of cheap scrumpy, with vocalist Joanna Swan sounding like Sade jostling with Beth Gibbons for pole position on the next 4 Hero album.
Granted, it's nothing completely new, and there is a tendency to drift aimlessly towards that state of inertia otherwise known as free form jazz, but at the same time there are enough twists and turns on this EP (and particularly on the lead track 'Quattra Neon') to keep me interested at least until a certain Mr Del Naja removes his head from up his own digestive orifice and gets round to making decent records again.
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6Dom Gourlay's Score