Acoustic Alchemy - The New Edge (1993)

Cynics might roll their eyes at the album's title -- there is nothing at all edgy about this duo's buffed-to-a-high-gloss music -- but The New Edge is actually one of Acoustic Alchemy's most entertaining releases. There's a playfulness to these tunes, like the puckish electronic drums on the flamenco-tinged and downright catchy "Notting Hill Two-Step" and the tongue-in-cheek boulevardier pretensions of the closing "Rive Gauche," that suggests a pair of sharp wits behind the well-packaged sheen of this music. The songs are a consistently memorable lot this time out, with a much higher than usual ratio of interesting melodies to snoozy new age mush, and the production, for once, is not so Velveeta-smooth that the record actually becomes hard to listen to. Indeed, songs like the genuinely lovely "Arc-En-Ciel" and "London Skyline" are among the duo's best ever. If you're only going to get one Acoustic Alchemy album, this is the one to get. ~ Stewart Mason