'Ariels' is the sound of Bent turning their backs on thrift store beats and junk shop samples for real music played on real instruments by real people.

"We just wanted more of a challenge," the affable and jocular Nail proclaims. "Working with musicians became more of an inspiration."

They sought out the assistance of Nottingham's - their hometown - like-minded musicians; songs were written instead of tracks and in places guitar chords became the starting points for their recordings.

"We wanted to create our own samples essentially," says Nail. "Putting the album together was a similar process to the past but whereas we used to use samples from records this time we used real recorded sounds. There were bits of musicianship on the first two albums, but on the whole they were mostly the product of programming and sampling."

The net result is nothing less than remarkable - not least in part thanks to the sublime vocal talents of Steve Edwards, Sian from Kosheen, Rachel from Weekend Players and longstanding Bent cohort Katty - bringing a human heart to a genre that in its synthetic state can oft seem cold and unforgiving.

Yet whereas Bent's first two albums made a virtue of being all over the shop, 'Ariels' is steadfastly cut from a different cloth. 'Sunday 29th''s gentle acoustica and haunting piano is Portishead if Bristol was bathed in sunshine and 'As You Fall' is the closest the noughties gets to replicating the Cocteau Twins' crepuscular ambient pop. Elsewhere the emotive and life-affirming splendour of 'Silent Life' brings to mind a slimmed down Polyphonic Spree, the instrumental 'On The Lake''s effortless cinematic grandeur fulfils every melancholy quotient and 'Now I Must Remember' gives a lie to the maxim that nostalgia isn't what it used to be. And though plink plonk electronica, '80s pop and '70s AOR all collide on 'I Can't Believe It's Over' it still feels remarkably right. A fact that's confirmed on the innately stunning 'Exercise 4 and the valedictory 'The Waters Deep'.

With its abundance of moods, textures and sunshine styles, it's head music par excellence: but then when the band admit to soaking up influences as diverse as Aphex Twin, Bread, David Bowie, Kate Bush and Maurice Fulton, what do you expect? Zero 7?

Tracklisting:

1. Comin' Back
2. Sunday 29th
3. I Can't Believe It's Over
4. As You Fall
5. Silent Life
6. Sing Me
7. On The Lake
8. Now I Must Remember
9. You Are The Oscillator
10. Sunday Boy
11. Exercise 4
12. The Waters Deep

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IMAGE See the album artwork