Dreamy and alluring, The Abyss Stares Back wanders playfully through it's demented landscapes, effortlessly floating among dim and hypnotic moods. It is music for night driving on unfamiliar and barren roads, a musical soundtrack for the dreams you couldn't remember upon waking but which left you with that strange sense of desperate longing that lingers.

Magical and surreal, S.Q.E. combines delicate, floating female vocals, frenetic brushed drums, sizzling scraped and bowed cymbals with low floating synths. Cool, unflappable walking-bass-line grooves sway amongst disturbed lullabyes in darkened rooms.

Between these songs are long ambient interludes, pulsing expanses of reverberant synthesizers and bending feedback tones shading twisting, dark environments. These introspective instrumentals add a patience and depth to the work as a whole.

And just when you think you have this disc figured out, along comes this sick cherry of a song "Cat", with it's lo-fi vibraphone, tuba, 1950's sci-fi effects, accordian accompaniment and it's looney nursery rhyme lyrics ("fragments of the ice cream man was all they ever found").

Unpredictable . . . disorienting . . . thoroughly enjoyable.