Justin Langlands and Dave Henley are a couple of London blokes who call themselves the Blood Brothers, and release their musical projects under the name Pressure Drop. Elusive is their new album, an incredibly varied affair where ambient tribalism rubs against slick soul, where moody instrumentals bump against dancable beats, where Richard-San the record reviewer gets frustrated with the glaring inconsistency and stumbles angrily to the Korean bar downstairs to get very, very drunk.

So now I have a hangover on top of having to write a review for this baffling record. Great. Well, the main problem is that the the Blood Brothers know much more about sound and sensation than they do songwriting. Tracks like "The Road" successfully combine African percussion, clarinets, chants and a harmonica, while "Don't Run Away" is a virtual primer on how to create a lame- ass R+B track. It's easy to imagine the Blood Brothers composing a decent film soundtrack or assembling an interesting sonic collage, but they shouldn't be writing pop songs. While Elusive has some great ambient pieces that are genuinely beautiful and evocative, it becomes dreadfully boring once somebody starts singing, (or rapping, for that matter). The dull, labored melodies combined with the all- too- familiar sounds of by- the- book "soul" singing make for a hard listen.

And these lyrics don't help. Here's a question for you, pulled straight off Elusive: "Why does a man laugh when another man cries?" Wow, I never thought about that before. Time to put on the old sourpuss, this time for the rest of eternity. It's these very liches and platitudes that litter the music of Elusive like the trash that made that old Indian weep in that '70s public service announcement. And now, having listened to this record, I am that old Indian. I cry. And my head hurts.

-Mark Richard-San