Anticipated and found were: the visions of beauty in the blindness of chaos, the sound of confusion to adore, the overlapping of panic into sensuality, and the questioning angels in the shadows. The setting — a subterrenean sunset still from Orphee. So if it's good enough for Cocteau then it's good enough for me - listless beauty and all that. What I hadn't anticipated was to find that Cyclobe have embraced even further the peripheral vapour-trails left by Luminous Darkness, their debut, and created a stunning and completely unique take on what I call ectoplasmic music: it feels like the sounds are leaking out of the speakers and seeping into the listeners ear-drums. It has taken form, if that's the right expression, and unfolds over the seven tracks of 'The Visitors'. Or it could also be the little specks of chaos only hitherto peeked at in Sun Ra moog solos, LSD-period Coil, early Throwing Muses and The Fall. 'The Visitors' is a constantly evolving, shape-shifting work that moves elegantly (or uncomfortably) between a state of grace and the struggle to hold onto that grace. "Brightness falls from the air" makes this notion explicit from the outset, the unsettled rumbling giving way here and there to gentle swathes of melody and hideously warped keyboards. It shudders and vibrates at the same time, and is a devastating combination: the celestial is both welcomed and feared. Similarly for "The body feels light and wants to fly"; the sounds are so subdued, the structure so viscous and arrested, that once it breaks free and actually flies, the listener is tempted to gulp for air. "If you want to see that nothing is left" wraps its pulsing, subdued electronic textures around a spiralling string section, each struggling to overpower the other. In the end though, its the organic, bodily aspect — the strings — that win. "Replaced by his constellation" literally replaces itself over and over, in an endlessly building serenade that could be mounting orgasm or encroaching panic; and when it suddenly breaks free into a shimmering set of harmonies you realise it is the former. The apprehension and threat of Luminous Darkness is replaced by a barely restrained infra-music that seems constantly at the brink of metamorphosising onto a new plane that Cyclobe themselves can't forsee. The Visitors vibrates and crackles. - Terry McGaughey, Brainwashed

Recently, the Guardian ran a piece heralding the arrival of a new electronic pastoralism, citing the likes of Boards of Canada as its avatars. In doing so, however, it remained completely oblivious of a much longer lasting and deeper strand of pastoralism in English experimental music - the Coil/Current 93 axis. For pushing 20 years now, this loose association of musicians has seamlessly and elegantly integrated cutting-edge electronic music with a strong feeling for the English landscape and a sense of what is best in the traditional music of England and beyond. This has manifested itself through Coil's solstice pieces and admiration of Kate Bush, Current 93's long relationship with folk legend Shirley Collins and even through to Julian Cope's stone circle obsession - his close collaborator Thighpaulsandra is also a current Coil member and contributes production work here. Cyclobe are very much aligned with this grouping, being made up of former Coil collaborators Stephen Thrower and Simon Norris. This, their second album, visits very much the same territory as Coil - most of the pieces here are long, stately modulated drones which hint at timeless landscapes and hermetic magical overtones. A lot of musicians these days strive for a successful negotiation of this territory, but it is extraordinarily difficult to achieve without succumbing to banal imitation or triteness. Cyclobe, however, accomplish the task beautifully, producing an album of elegant complexity and careful balance. Stand out tracks are 'Brightness falls from the air' and 'Strix nebulosa', which are shot through with delicate Arabic motifs, but which do not tout their influences in an excessive or flashy way. Cyclobe integrate them into the smooth flow of the music to expand and enrich it, rather than letting them become tacky surface embellishment. Some of this can perhaps be put down to one of their collaborators, the intriguing-sounding Ossian Brown, described as "a traveller and teenage genius currently studying music under strict Arabic tuition". One to watch, I suspect. Never exactly mainstream (you try getting a Coil album in HMV), this nexus of creativity has amassed an impressive body of work quietly and unobtrusively, finding a space where acoustic and electronic music can coexist to produce atmospheres of expansive and sometimes troubling beauty without ever venturing near new age schlock. Seek it out. - Ian Simmons, Nthposition

The Visitors commences with a cacophony of wildly panning industrial sounds which push the concept of industrial 'music' to its limits and then a little further. There is really only one way to go from this ultimate position and that's towards something more melodic. Here and there, the computer-mediated sounds of Cyclobe's Stephen Thrower and Simon Norris are supplemented by musicians playing violin, cello and hurdy-gurdy. As I'm not much of a fan of pure noise, I personally consider these to be the best bits. The Visitors follows Cyclobe's debut album, Luminous Darkness (1999). - Rik, Flux Europa