AmbientMusicGuide.com

While songs with lyrics rarely count as "pure" ambient music in my book - they're too literal for one thing - at least one song-orientated album released in 2001 achieved everything good ambient is capable of doing: engaging the mind, relaxing the body, and taking you off well-trodden paths to somewhere more subtle and suggestive. That album is Programmed To Love by the aptly named Bent aka Simon Mills and Neil Tolliday. They've crafted a brilliant collection of twisted downtempo tunes assembled from elements of lounge, hip hop, ambient, house music and the lush string sounds of classic easy-listening records. Bent do things that on paper sound daft but on record end up sounding sublimely daft, like "Exercise One" which samples a deadly serious sound technician giving you a rundown of his much-loved equipment. Highpoints among the album's more serious tracks include the achingly lovely single "Swollen" and the closing track "Always" which samples a performance of Ernesto Lecuona's 1940's standard "Always In My Heart" and drops it into a slow, warm house groove with lovely sighing strings.

Programmed To Love appeared at a time when chill acts were attracting a lot of mainstream attention in the UK and the years have been much kinder to it than some of the other popular releases from that period. It's finely judged balance of serious and silly is aging beautifully. In contrast, Zero 7's polished and pretty Simple Things (2001) now seems overrated and underweight, while the jolly Englishness and sampledelic cleverness of Lemon Jelly's Lost Horizons (2002) has dissolved into a gimmicky, rather annoying record.

Bent's fantastic second album The Everlasting Blink is the equal of its predecessor, every bit as cheerful, batty and brilliant. Once again the duo's genius is in sampling unlikely sources and choosing to be more than simply clever with them. What they plunder they take several steps further than most of their peers, turning out rich full-blooded songs and weirdly emotional instrumentals. "Magic Love" is a slow, sweet and warm disco house tune (I hate the word Balearic) sampling 70's soft popsters Captain & Tennille. Other highlights include the fairytale-like opener "King Wisp" complete with strings, flute and harp, plus the African chants and bleepy synth stabs that overlay a primitive 60's rock jam on "Exercise Three". Guest vocalist Jon Marsh from The Beloved also appears, singing the lo-fi shuffle "Beautiful Otherness" in his trademark crisp, smooth baritone.

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