Timo Kaukolampi, frontman for Finnish electronic rock group K-X-P and tireless sonic wanderer, is releasing his second solo album, this time on Optimo Music. Exquisitely rendered, shadowy, curiously claustrophobic and even occasionally paranoid, »Inside The Sphere« is an album wholly deserving of its name.

A sense of paranoia is one of the threads through this glittering, winking electronic maze.

Indeed, it’s amazing the effects achieved with a few sparse electronic textures, the odd smattering of studio trickery, and two or three well-placed synthesizer parts. Though the result might sound ostensibly simplistic, Inside The Sphere is an album of reduction rather than addition. The rhythmic and textural scaffolding is based around what’s not there, rather than what is.

»Inside The Sphere« is not a one-note album. For every moment where a clammy ambient space enters, a buttery analogue bassline is there to fill it. This clash seems to be the album’s engine room, its power supply.