I fucking hate plumbing. I will seal my fate now and publicly declare I will never become a plumber. I don't have anything against that particular trade, of course. In fact, some of my best friends are plumbers, and each one is a model citizen (save for a few anti-social quirks that I won't go into). Rather than entering the world of drain snakes and grouting, I would consider the following occupations: night shift highway repair guy (there's a lot of standing around big holes in the blacktop but I think I can handle it); or lawyering (not civil law, though; it'd have to be all that clever maneuvering they do on "Law and Order.")

Having jacked in a law career (probably because he wasn't caught up in the moral conundrum that Jack McCoy finds himself in every weeknight on A&E;), Klaus Waldeck didn't become a plumber. I like this guy already. Like me, he didn't want to battle with the three-day-old remains of someone else's bowel, or to unblock some fool's clogged sink. Lawyering transformed Waldeck into a downtempo producer along the lines of Kruder and Dorfmeister, the Viennese Gilbert and Sullivan of sophisticated couch and cosmopolitan beats.

In 1992, having knocked around London mixing rave-o-matic platters for the likes of Chocci's Chewns, Waldeck dumped the mong-orientated playground rave scene and jumped on the trip-hop bandwagon. He recorded downbeat tracks with Incognito's pair of lungs, Joy Malcolm. Waldeck then tinkered around with the results and-- what do you know?-- Kruder and Dorfmeister soon heard the songs and decided to help Klaus rearrange them. Nothing like a singular vision, eh, Klaus?

What do these tracks sound like after all this tossing around? They sound like top pocket grade, regulation Viennese lounge beats. "Slaapwagen" is a lite puff of cheesy funk with "come hither" cooing (no doubt engineered to attract your mate of choice while sunk in your sofa). "Children of the Ghetto" relies on our suspension of disbelief that no sentient human would want to concoct such empty-headed, pseudo-political statements as "Children of the ghetto/ Always in the news/ Darkness is their motto/ Bitter are their blues/ Deep inside the ghetto/ There's a unity." Where's the substance here?

But this disc isn't all substanceless arse. Though "Spy Like an Angel" has a ludicrous title, the track itself would fit neatly between the Horace Andy contributions to Massive Attack's Blue Lines-- it's that mellow, dubby, plaintive, and damn melan-chronic. It's the album's doobie song par excellence.

However, Balance of the Force isn't, uh... all that well balanced. For every "Spy Like an Angel," there's also an "Aquarius," during which Waldeck expects us to stomach a recitation on the moon's being in the seventh house, the alignments of the planets, and their ill-mannered influence on brotherly love and social progress. (Incidentally, "Aquarius" made Single of the Month in Muzik magazine-- just shows you what too much e and a lifetime of weekends in Ibiza can do to the fragile structure of the mind.) However, if Waldeck mixed a dub of "Aquarius," I probably be less harsh.

Balance of the Force could well have been an album you could recommend to your Palace Brothers- adoring friends. But in its present mix, such a recommendation might risk you becoming the clueless victim of a phantom wedgie. Klaus Waldeck undoubtedly has a keen sense of atmosphere and can be astoundingly restrained (check the dub caverns that hollow through the narcotic "Northern Lights"). Unfortunately, he allows his collaborators to compromise his vision for their sophisticate-flattering, cash-friendly bandwagon hopping. Still, it's more rewarding than dislodging turds from bunged-up pipework. And I mean that sincerely.

-Paul Cooper