Pleetch

Although more accomplished and mature sounding than their tongue-in-cheek debut, The Ziggy Franklen Radio Show, the Greenskeepers' sophomore set, is very much a palatable album of warm danceable grooves, with a leftfield-edge reflecting the very essence of this conceptual collection. They've grown up if you will.

Maintaining their Chicago house roots, with a nod towards the jazz-flavourings of Roy Davis Jr, the quartet receive vocal support from several of their fellow Chi-town residents. It's never a bad thing that a vocalist reminds of Crazy Penis' Danielle Moore and here DJ Collette does just that on the dreamy, soulful single-in-waiting "Keep It Down"(due with a plethora of creative mixes from Radio Slave, Rob Mello and Members Only). Diz Washington does the honourscovering Christopher Cross' Balearic favourite "Sailing" and DJ Heathershakes it all down on the Incognito sounding"Dots".

The quartet are set to embark on a full world tour in the not too distant future to support the album, which I'm sure will do them no harm.

Yet the trade off for maturity means that much of the quirky humour that made their debut album so original within the sea of recording mediocrity, is largely absent.

That said, the Talking Heads-like "Lotion" is a work of black comedy genius that pays homage to the Silence of the Lambs with lines like, "It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it get the hose again". Funny and worrying. And, the rocky, Pixies-esque "Filipino Phil"is perhaps the other 'far-out' exception though it fails to raise the pulse rate any.

However, no matter how much more polished and sophisticated Pleetch maybe, it still lacks the raw experimental creativeness of its predecessor.

Reviwer: Lewis Dene