Jon Thompson is a troubled soul.

Having made music for several years under the guises Of Normandy and now Oppressed By The Line, the only surviving band member throughout his various incarnations of the two has been his trusty laptop.

For a guy who says that turmoil could be his middle name, The Cause Of The Color sounds anything but tumultuous and haggard.

Instead, it's an electronic odyssey that revels in its own misery via an upbeat soundtrack that sounds like a 2020 Vision outtake with an almost Kurt Weill-esque overcoat. Opener 'Fragmented' is the even more downbeat doppelganger to The Field Mice's 'Let's Kiss And Make Up' while 'A Painting Of A Tapestry' is a disturbing electro distress call that is eerily reminiscent of some of the more disparaging moments of Joy Division's Closer opus.

Where The Cause Of The Color lets itself down though is in the fact that, those two apart, there is little to differentiate between the other four tracks on the record, and perhaps with hindsight this release would have been better chopped in half and made into a three song EP than a full blown mini epic album.

Whatever the case, it has a few delightful moments, such as the aforementioned pair and the in-FUSED-get-sanitised trauma of 'Even', which at least give Oppressed By The Line a more than healthy leg-up on the electro-credibility ladder.