Consisting of the Dome duo and Daniel Miller, this album pretty much sounds as one might expect it too: eerily dark yet intelligent atmospheres, cold and harsh instrumentation, with frequent pleasures of electronic experimentation (thanks to the inclusion of the Mute Records founder, who's a notorious dabbler in electronic music); it makes sense considering the 'band' name is Dome and Mute spliced together. At first I was a little disappointed; some tracks seemed rather atypical of Dome's sound, with occasional flare-ups of a more 'new-wavey' edge. But the conclusion I came to in my opinion was a strong, albiet slightly unbalanced, piece of work. The album has very few vocals, mostly for ambient purposes; the track 'The First Person' is a re-recording of Dome's 'Linasixup' (the latter of which is my preferred version). It contains a number of brief instrumentals reminiscent of, well, Dome's usual, but gives a fine dose of Daniel Miller's involvement, in tracks like 'Heart of Hearts' and the title track. I don't think it's a perfect album, but it's a genuinely good listen.

To me this just epitomises great experimental 80s post-punk, it's sort of in the centre of one of the epicentres at the time. It doesn't care what you think, it's not a polished gem, it's a rough diamond and an exquisite work of art. The swirling multi-layered 'Or so it seems' is divine, plaintive and strange. When I had a pet dog he used to howl at the amplified heartbeat at the end as it fades out, every time.....and it almost had that emotional effect on me too....at the time...of course, Companion piece to the 2 mighty He Said albums, especially 'Hail'. All underground english genius, warm and cold, hard and soft, rich and superficial all at the same time.