artist: Rena Jones country of origin: USA style(s): Ambient, contemporary classical, electronic essential releases: Driftwood (2006, Native State Records) Indra's Web (2009, Cartesian Binary Recordings)

My aversion to digital glitch music, that bastard child of binary code, remains undiminished to this day. Is that the CD player stuck again? Or a dodgy CD burn? Rena Jones music, however, suggests that all the self-indulgent, wince-inducing music of this sub-genre isn't necessarily a creative dead-end and that more than a decade of experimentation by artists has not been in vain.

For this classically-trained cellist, violinist and electronic musician, the clicks, scrapes and stutters are but just one of many subtle parts that make up her beguiling and unique music. Her restraint in the use of these electronic elements coupled with her strong sense composition sounds like a logical end-point for glitch experimentation. Her third album Driftwood marks her coming of age as a recording artist and this standard is maintained on the follow-up Indra's Web. Meshed with the electronic element is excellent melodic writing for cello and violin, embellished further with electric piano and a steadily shifting palate of strange synthetic textures. Most tracks are somber and a little bit ambiguous without being at all alienating.

The vast majority of music on both albums is light years beyond the random doodling of geeks with laptops who delight in the kind of noises that clear rooms and annoy your dog. Glitch as a tool rather than a genre? Now there's an idea with a future.

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