Those who’ve followed Erol Alkan and Richard Norris’s twists and turns on their Beyond the Wizard’s Sleeve voyage over the last decade will be forgiven for wondering if another debut album had slipped out before now.
But while there have been compilations like 2008's Ark 1 and 2009's Re-Animations, The Soft Bounce is the first time Alkan and Norris have gone the full distance together in search of trippy, far-out delights. It's an imaginative, occasionally oddball and always intriguing blast of psych-tronic noodling and doodling.
A cast of guest vocalists (including Jane Weaver, Euros Childs, Hannah Peel and Holly Miranda) embellish woozy, wobbly tracks, but the real joys come when the BTWS chiefs stir the psych-pot themselves.
