Minor-league Dutch label Konkurrent must be doing something right with their In the Fishtank releases. Basically the world's worst idea: getting bands with a definitive inclination to drone on a bit to work with other bands who suffer a similar desire to drone professionally for their respective country in a studio for two days and release the results. Urgh. Thankfully (despite Sonic Youth, Tortoise et al's best efforts) the finished products aren't simply a collection of prog-rock overblown shambles, and are often as interesting as they are inspired -- aha, so this is what Low's half finished ideas they didn't consider worthy of their own albums sound like. And so forth.

Full marks then, for whoever elected San Diego's angst-ridden, crimson-toned, honky-tonk miserablists The Black Heart Procession into the metaphorical Fishtank to work with The Netherlands very own non-threatening, equally angst-ridden, proto-prog equivalent of San Diego's finest. The beauty of both acts being dangerously similar in the first place proves to be the album's most apparent, and most significant, asset. Konkurrent obviously came to the conclusion that combining the romantic dawdle of Pall Jenkins' atonal piano with anything too ridiculous would be a mess.

Jenkins' funerial grand piano does, in fact, take centre stage, as with the majority of Black Heart Procession numbers, on each of the six tracks on In The Fishtank. Not a bad thing, it's probably the best thing to ever happen in music. For fans of The Black Heart Procession, and the respective popularity of the two artists would suggest most buyers of the cd are going to be, this is basically The Black Heart Procession, but bigger, better, faster, harder and has some of the most beautiful moments of melancholy since the ships of gold sank at the end of Three. In all honesty, opening track "Voiture en Rouge", were it not for the sultry "no-really-I'm-not-Isabella-Rosselini" airy breaths of the mysterious "Rachael Rose" (who? who knows her? why's there a Swiss singer orgasming in French on a collaboration between eccentric Dutch and American boys? etc.), could easily be lifted from either of the bands' former albums, as could the second track "Dog Song", save the fact the Solbakken boys take over the vocals. Quibbles over whether dogs and red cars fit into the scheme of the usual Black Heart lyrics directed elsewhere, thanks. However, the imagination and general tendancy to be spectacular is what makes this release so much brighter, soar much higher, and smothered in more technicolour than even Amore Del Tropico. There's the aforementioned duet between Jenkins and Rose, which nods nonchalently in the direction of Tindersticks and Calexico; there's the knowing smiles and utter devistation of "Your Cave" - now that's how you do the Bad Seeds; and most interestingly of all - it all rocks.

For anyone not already familiar with The Black Heart Procession or Solbakken, you'd have to be some sort of cretin not to realise amidst this overdeliberated hyperbole that this album is phenomenal, and also a cunningly useful introduction to their music, and also some of the most outright songs they've ever committed. As for Solbakken, it's fair to say the share of the responsibilities on In The Fishtank mean their contribution says a lot less about their respective material, but for anything this good, taking two to tango does Solbakken the opposite of harm.

-John Widdop