Allinson/Brown, AV 1 (CD)

Phill Brown is a record producer who has worked with everyone from Roxy Music to Talk Talk (Mark Hollis appears, under a pseudonym, on one track on this CD). Dave Allinson is a visual artist who plays in quite obscure bands. AV 1, from 1998, owes a big debt to Brian Eno, ranging from his laid-back drum machine records like Nerve Net to the ultra-sparse piano on Discrete Music. It's a nice, well-executed album (and unsurprisingly, given Brown's background, it sounds quite good), and it certainly displays good taste in its sources of inspiration, but only at brief moments does originality shine through, mostly on the closing track "Steel".