"This CD is positively dripping with inspiration....add Malice in Wonderland to your sonic library and you'll be churning out interesting stuff real quick"

"This CD is practically dripping with inspiration. You get a variety of striking and useful loops, arpeggiated pattern,drones, and events generated digitally, 'analogally', mechanically, and acoustically, and tastefully and creatively processed - yet presented so that the sources become way less important than the finished sounds. It isn't a budget-priced item, but add Malice in Wonderland to your sonic library and you'll likely be churning out interesting stuff real quick.

The contents were crafted by lan Boddy, the Brit who's been behind other projects including Zero-G's Ambient 1 and 2 and Creative Essentials Vol. 7: Dream Zone. His material avoids being abrasive and nasty, but it sometimes gets edgy. Large and wondrous, too. Check out "Scary Throbs" and the chilling "Sirens from the Void." They're reminiscent of Wendy Carlos's music for The Shining - the definitive version, with Jack Nicholson. Picture a lady in the shower behind a frosted curtain and you can imagine what "Hitchcock" sounds like. This version has a bit of a lift in tempo compared to the original. If you can hang loose throughout its 20 seconds, you're braver than I.

In "Eerie Bell Drone 1" amid floating synth timbres -not bells - comes an electrified "voice", no doubt created with a vocoder and some unknown synth. "l love the quick buzzing pattern of 'Skipping Phased Hats", Jim Aikin noted. Fans of Up Periscope, The Hunt for Red October, and other sub flicks should appreciate "Submerged Bells." (Or is it pitched sonar?) Now that's eerie. So are "Gamelan" and "Mysterious Gamelan." I was a student of Lou Harrison, but never heard any of his music sound like this. He might like it as a bed for something else, though. I'm just not so sure it's really F/6/Ab/D, as reported in the liner notes - which, by the way, spell out the name of each sample within each track and (if applicable) its key and tempo in beats-per-minute.

Sample length isn't indicated, but all tracks are sub-indexed for ease of access. Real drums may not always be used in the Drum Loops, but that's no problem. Included are trip-hop and hip-hop patterns at a sauntering 80 bpm, more experimental electrified beats at a slightly faster 108-120 pace, and house and jungle material that clips along to130-170. Each of the descriptively named "Heavy Plods" and "Annoying Whine Beat" runs at 160 bpm, but the timbres used make the former seem slower. Metallic synth stabs in "Extreme Ping Pong" (119) pan in rhythm from one side of the stereo mix to the other. Four to ten measures - plus an extra half-beat - are given for each drum loop, and they vary enough that you can string repeats together without the part getting boring.

Thankfully, all tempos are correctly identified I found a lot to like among Malice's FX Loops. A couple of tracks with "reason" in their names caught my fancy. "Resonant Beats" appears to hop along more quickly than its 116 bpm thanks to its snappishness (if I may borrow a term from Elaine on Fox's Ally McBeal). I can't tell if it's some slammin' bass playing or arpeggiated synth, but it drives like a screaming locomotive. Sadly, it's over in less than 17 seconds. A similar bass timbre appears with a sixteenth note cymbal pattern in "Jungle Resonance," which runs considerably faster (160) and somewhat longer (24 seconds).

You get a completely different feel from the ominous but laid-back feeling "Psycho Jungle," which seems slower than its 164 bpm because it uses no sixteenths, only eighths. Maybe the audio source is really identified in the name, but they might have been hubcaps from the sound of the captivating and intricate "Steel Drums Vocoder." And don't miss "Jungle Vocoder Beat 1," a speedily (175 bpm) arpeggiated pattern that may be synth with acoustic percussion, maybe something else, but definitely is exciting and useful.

"This is virtuoso sound design," Jim observed. "The components of the rhythm |oops are tasty, and they're matched and blended well. I also appreciate having multibar loops with filter sweeps and other variations. And the stereo panning is killer. I wasn't too impressed with the smattering of one-shot percussion events, but Jim liked the boomy kick drums: "BD FX 1" and "2," their companion trio of "Nasty BD 1," "2,"and "3" complete with rumbling aftershocks. He was especially fond of the wiry "Ambient Hit with Feedback." Not everything in the Synth FX section wowed me. While it's impressive the way "Spaceship Take Off" takes off, does the ascending barberpole thingy, and gradually fades to nothingness at the one-minute mark, I'm not thrilled with the gritty timbres used.

Boddy excels in the looped and arpeggiated patterns, environments, extended gestures (Ambiences), and drones. The violin in his 53-second-long "Plucking in the Distance" sounds bowed and in the Taj Mahal, but it evokes visions of fog - heavy, murderous fog. Also forboding are "Spacy Atmos 1" and "2," in which a low-note drone is rained upon by trilled synth droplets through echos, reverb, and an overall flanged wash. I used to do stuff like that on my Minimoog. Hmm, now that I've got it set up again, I might try doing some of my own spacy atmospheres. There's a lot of useful material on Malice in Wonderland If you're looking for another vein of inspiration, it might be your Queen of Hearts."