Album Review: Let’s Go Outside – Conversations With My Invisible Friends (Soma Records)

After eighteen years, Soma Records is still as consistently good as ever, and very much keeping the side up is techno producer Let's Go Outside, aka Stephen Schieberl, with his latest offering 'Conversations With My Invisible Friends'. There are a few skits and snippets padding things out, but when he gets to work with some electro moodiness on 'I See You Dancing' and a housey groove with 'Machismo', you know everything's going to work out well. The highlight of the album is 'Emergence', a collaboration with Scott Sunn, which takes a good while to kick in, although pleasantly so with its steel drum flecks. When it finally releases after six minutes, for 90 blissful seconds you are there in dance heaven with beats smashing and a haunting melody, before it comes to rest again. Also of particular note, 'Let Us Pray' has an air of techno menace with its tech bass and Eastern-influenced strings - creating a slightly paranoid world, while 'Giving You Up' gets more techy and 'Sweet Memories' stays in the same vein to end the disc in slightly moody fashion. All in all, some good touches in this LP. And watch out for Schieberl's own Slant label, which is due to drop some 12-inches soon, as this chap clearly knows a thing or two about what makes a good electronic cut. PV Buy from iTunes Buy from Amazon