Ah ! (EU)

icking off an album with a crisp but still just filthy enough beat and some slightly on-heat female vocal sounds -- on the title track of the album, at that -- is certainly one way to grab the attention. But if the idea of self-consciously sleazy electronic music is hardly a new one -- Armand Van Helden's career certainly hasn't been too overly harmed by it, to name one figure out of about a million -- then Andreas Heiszenberger's generally minimal (if hardly micro) take on Euro-lounge-disco for the swinging set is enjoyable enough. (The fact that Heiszenberger goes right ahead and calls one song "We Call It Minimal" pretty much gives the game away, though the music would have warranted that description without the prompt.) "How We Feel," with its increasingly involved collage of buzzing voices that sound like alien insects having an argument while a gentle keyboard line anchors the final part of the song, and the almost unearthly soothing cascade of "Tone," with soft descending notes against the blunt beat, are two standouts. Catherine Huth's vocal part on "So Fast" is OK if not revelatory, but the controlled bite of her delivery, swathed in reverb as it is, makes a good anchor in any event. ~ Ned Raggett|