Introduced by Autechre to the Skam label, original home of Boards of Canada's Music Has the Right to Children album, there is an inescapable air of Warp Records manqué about Bola, aka Rochdale resident Darren Fitton. The third punningly-titled album he's released as Bola (the first two are Soup and Fyuti - geddit??), Gnayse, though divertingly pretty listening, is indicative of the doldrums in which much current electronica floats.

Of course, the tracks, always with tongue-twistingly Autechre-ish titles like Opanopono and Sirasancerre, are pleasingly propulsive, but Gnayse evinces neither Autechre's brain-shredding, gravity-defying rhythmic invention, nor the alien elegance of Boards of Canada, nor even the crystalline beauty of Plaid. Becalmed, literally, in an indeterminate zone between soundtrack music, contemporary classical, new age and a mildly left-field Depeche Mode remix, Gnayse clicks, hiccups and shimmers with requisite atmospheric mournfulness.

It conforms perfectly to Brian Eno's notion of ambient music as something you don't really listen to, which has to be a pretty pyrrhic victory.