If you spent your Sunday evenings in the late 1980's and early 1990's listening to a show on 3PBS-FM called The Electronic Influence, you might have been vaguely familiar with a local artist by the name of Ian Eccles-Smith. I hadn't heard anything about him since the release of his 1992 album Clubbed 2 Death, which was some fairly medium-edged electronica featuring liberal use of samples of various serial-killers. Last night, I received an e-mail from him (after he discovered I'd played his wonderful track The Slaughtering Eye a bit over 4 years ago when I did a few radio shows at 3MU) telling me he'd just finished a new work by the name of Apsilene. You can download it all from his website, plus there's a few 30 second samples for the non-committal types among us. I notice he produced it with long-time legend and fellow antipodean Paul Schütze, whose influence shows here and there across seven tracks of traveller's ambient-fusion-something-or-other music. It sounds a bit 80's retro, but a different kind of 80's retro. "Think Prog!" he told me.