A year after Alex Smoke’s impressive debut, ‘Incommunicado’, comes his second full-length outing on Soma. On ‘Paradolia’ we find the considerable talents of Smoke maturing into a release that will surely be placed amongst the best of 2006. The album commences with ‘Paradolia Intro’, the synths of Smoke shining through the cloud and rain and making way for the sublime textures of ‘Persona’. This is an incredibly well-balanced track, where the low end grounds the chimes that drive this minimal house grinder. ‘A Moment to Myself’ is most appropriately titled as the post-acidic bleeps and background voice make for an inward looking piece of music. A building feeling of melancholy grows on ‘Never Want to See You Again’, Smoke’s dry vocals doing a profound job of creating a sense of longing and loss. To prevent proceedings becoming too somber, the stabs and rolls of ‘Meany’ reinvigorate the listener and provide entertainment for the dancefloor. Then comes the high point of ‘Paradolia’, ‘Make My Day’. It is hard to overemphasize what a perfectly crafted cut this is. The distorted voice of Smoke gives this track a feeling of fragile beauty – a love song on smack perfect for the after-afterhours. ‘Prima Materia’, which follows, is well produced but its orchestral strings and horns are ever so slightly out of place between ‘Make My Day’ and the more upbeat minimal house of ‘Snider’. ‘We Like It Insipid’ is a mellow affair, with its structures and feel being reminiscent of some of the