Album is a primer to Smith's sonic agenda which was inspired by music for and beyond the dancefloor. This duality coming from his love for guitar bands, (like Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine); the post-dance envriotronics of labels like Fat Cat and Warp; and artists like the Aphex Twin. When fused together these influences create ambisonics-lush, hypnotic soundscapes underpinned by electro rhythms. Exactly the sound that greets anyone who takes the trouble to search out and purchase his second full length recording, also the first Involve release; Are you that retail snob?.

The album is held together by warm organic textures of analogue synths, layers of effects and top rate production. It was greeted with a raft of praise from the US and UK IDM (intelligent dance music) scenes. Definitely one for the liminal zone that lies between late nights and early mornings.

When not busy making music Smith is helping to promote other local artists. Among these is Michael Upton, (another Skankatronics veteran), whose Jet Jaguar project became the second release on Involve. Taking his name from a Godzilla cartoon, Jet Jaguar arrives from the sampledelic world of funk, hip-hop and dub. Genres that have always been reflexive; borrowing riffs, drum patterns and vocals from the past in order to funk them up and create new music. Upton utilises a similar approach, lacing tracks with old school samples, odd radio samples and nanoblips from who knows where. Also critical to Upton are the low end rumblings of bass theory, so its unsurprising to find that Upton gets inspiration from 70s dub masters. He sees no point in simply emulating them, however, preferring to utilise aspects from the dub-space program to pan, echo, stretch and distort space and time. This anti-retro stance is reflected in a track entitled 'tired patois' which is Upton s take on dub/hip-hop minus the clichis associated with these styles.

The third release for Involve is Patio (a collaboration between Smith and Upton) 'Parallel Play'. The inspiration behind the project was partly Smith's admiration for the Jet Jaguar material. So how did they find working together? According to Smith "It was great, pretty easy to come up with ideas and jam around sounds until tracks started taking shape". The Patio sound takes the best practices from the solo material and puts them through an aural blender. The result as Smith explains is "more electro than Jet Jaguar and more bassy and concise than Aspen" 'Parallel Play' is a good combination of our sounds, lush in a lot of ways that Jet Jaguar is not, dry and crackly in ways that Aspen is not. Is also a lot more varied selection of tracks than either of our solo material with lots of guitar and vocal samples too.

The second in a continuing series of 'more experimental' works on the CDR side of the involve label. It is strictly limited to 100 copies. Andrew Thomas is a world renown interior space designer and ex-Australasian Frisbee Disc Champion. This work is made up of 11 sonic translations based on the artwork 'so you wanna be a (death) star'. The star is dub deconstructed. The pulling apart/breaking down of a form & its space to reveal a dark mesmerising radiance. The last track - 'fluoresce' is a revised work (originally written for a short film). The music feel disturbing and tense, yet contains a warmth that grows with familiarity. Unique stuff.

Top NZ producer Bevan Smith returns under the signer guise producing an album of tracks as 'experiments in the movement of ambient music'. The music is deep, bass heavy feeds through shifting textures. Both minimalist and lovely. Inspirations are gained from the Berlin dub-techno scenes and there exists the same serenity and beauty as produced in last involve releases. Andrew Duke's number 1 for May... see techno cognition

Deeper waters and darker movements. Drones and the slow movement of tone shapes and scrapes. 'All the pretty things' is 18 months of work by Clinton Francis, the man behind the mastering of involve releases. Under the watchful ears and sometimes co-production of Bevan Smith. Comparisons and inspirations have been gained from the ambience of Thomas Heckmann, Jocham Papp along with modal stirrings of Seefeel and shoegaze bands such as Slowdive.

Jeremy Coubrough is studying towards a degree in performance jazz saxophone in Wellington. Imagine a soundtrack written by someone suffering sub-clinical ADD who has grown up on Herbie Hancock, Boney M, various Moog records and Nintendo consoles. Previous demo tracks are written and recorded in less time than it takes to make dinner. The music is surprising thoughtful jazz/hop/electro. Jeremy nods to himself and mutters "herbie".