These two CDs landed on the doormat within a week of each other, both originating from Brighton and both featuring the sea as cover star. The contents aren’t a millions miles away from each other either, beautiful ambience and laid back electronica being the order of the day, a perfect soundtrack to the current weather and late night work sessions.

Lost Idol‘s second album – ‘Brave The Elements’, out soon on Cookshop – is perhaps the most varied of the two, featuring vocals on some tracks, a distinct nod to Boards of Canada here and there and a full tip of the hat to Kraftwerk on the excellent opener ‘Lightwerk’.

Nest’s ‘Retold‘ – on the Serein label – is partly made up of the duo’s self-titled EP from 3 years ago but bolstered up into an album by five new tracks. All mine a similar vein to the Eno and Cluster school of ambience. Mostly beatless it takes in drones, piano, strings and odd percussion to create spaces filled with calm and beauty without ever resorting to the tweeness that some ambient music seems to come ingrained with. The new tracks are even stronger than the EP in my opinion, looking forward to more from these guys.

Thanks to James at Cookshop and Rob at Multilink for the CDs.