'The Hanging Garden'

Available from Lunette Records, Unit 1, Forest Garden Mews, London N17 6XA,

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S ELF-MARKETED as 'uplifting and soothing music for the apocalypse', Hypnotique is Susi O'Neill's one-woman show and on this, her debut album, she performs no less than twelve different roles and both writes and produces all twelve songs. Classically-trained and specialising in the theremin, Hypnotique is inspired by Electronic (Jean Jacques Perrey, Bob Moog) and Industrial (Throbbing Gristle) and cut her musical teeth in groups such as Zorch, Dawn of the Replicants, Heist, Nought, the forthcoming Tenzin Wah and others. A resident of Tottenham, in north London, Hypnotique appears on the CD cover in a white lace dress, standing - appropriately, perhaps - beside a tree from which a pair of female legs in fishnet stockings can be seen dangling lifelessly from the branches. The cover itself, meanwhile, has a distinctly 'home-made' feel to it, with a punched stencil design running alongside the right-hand edge, snowflakes on the spine and all neatly sealed together with a knotted red ribbon. The album is limited to just 777 copies.

'The Witch's Tale' is a combination of light thumps, weird theramin and electronic swirling, the spoken vocals telling of moonlit encounters and dark sins performed in the woods that lie beyond the prying eyes of unsuspecting 'squirrels, woodcutters and picnikers'. Hypnotique's voice contains a playful, almost sulky quality, floating on a simultaneous air of childlike innocence and female mischievousness. The bass that lightly rumbles beneath the humming theremin reminds me of The Legendary Pink Dots, but the atmosphere is busier and therefore less minimalist than the average Edward Ka-Spel affair and manages to balance the proliferation of instruments very effectively.

'The King Never Died' hurtles towards you like an eclectic train, electronic lyrics only barely-sung through an infectiously frenetic bassline and rush of plinking percussion. The repetitive nursery-rhyme style of 'The Once Man' is an interesting litany of power and prohecy, becoming snagged on a barbed spike of wild alto sax before the theremin gives way to an inconclusive flurry of jumbled samples. It's both innovative and original, hard to define yet able to make its various aspects compatible with one another.

'Alphabetic' is a stereophonic soup of squeaky lettering that sounds like Pinky and Perky with their balls cut off. Fifty per cent of everything from A to Z is crammed into each ear after being made to walk through a peeling electronic sheepdip. 'Last Wednesday' is completely different. Like a soundtrack from a 1950s B-movie it flirts with a funky Latin rhythm as Hypnotique's sweet girly vocals add a touch of naughtiness to the proceedings like an Amazonian De Sade. It's brilliant. Similar to Elijah's Mantle, perhaps, and so quintesssentially English and with enough nose-thumbing sauce and sexual innuendo to fill a top shelf in any fin-de-siecle bookshop. The accusations are unrelenting, right through to the clever BT finale: 'Please hang up and try again'. It's not hard to guess what the next track is about. Amid soulful saxophonic wails, thudding heartbeats and psychedelic swirls,

'Dear Diana' concerns itself with a certain princess who found herself caught 'between the sheets of the Daily Mail' and an Egyptian prince. Lyrically, this is like a song from another age and the attitude, at least, borders on pure Punk and I could imagine this being performed by Eve Libertine of Crass. 'Clara De Lune' is dedicated to Clara Rockmore (1911-98), one of the world most notable thereamin players and someone who had a vast impact on the Electronic genre. The wavering serenity of this unique instrument makes this one of the most memorable and moving songs on the album. Piano and a knock-knocking percussion combine with divine lyrics to create a fine tribute about beauty and solitude. It's incredible to think that such sweet sounds can arise from pure movement, controlling both pitch and volume effortlessly and driving a mournful stake right into the very heart of the listener.

'See-Saw', meanwhile, is a swift 37-second burst of gnarled electronics and sonic spaghetti, clearly demonstrating that Hypnotique has a darker and more experimental side that would sit well on Industrial labels such as Cold Spring and Somnambulant Corpse or even radio stations like Resonance FM and Radio Three's 'Mixing It'.

'Trust Me' has a more structured feel to it: tinkling viola, crackling frequencies, light snares and challenging words that acknowledge the more demonic and untrustworthy side of human nature.

The pseudo-Churchillian parody that is 'We Will Fight Them On The Beaches' begins like a lilting lullaby in which the echo of the saxophone often resembles the sound of swooping aircraft. Whether this is deliberate or not is quite another matter, but for me the track seems to encapsulate the double-headed nature of war. Sadness and spitfires are locked together in a tragic fight to the death.

'Winds of Malconent' is just that. A quick billowing nightmare that sounds like some selfish bastard has left a door open on the north face of the Eiger. The final track, 'Deja Vu', follows on immediately. A mesmerising piano fused with jazzy vocals and woeful clarinet. Almost like Wim Mertens or Ophelia's Dream visiting a smoke-filled club in New Orleans, but the intervention of Hypnotique's lyrics gradually transform the song into more of a retrospective exercise in the eternally recurrent: 'This is a eulogy for everyone I have been'. The range of vocal styles used here is amazing. The sung, the spoken, the officious, the harmonic, the merciless, the cursing and the sarcastic; they're all here in generous quantities. It's a cabaret of bitchiness that plants a sharpened stiletto heel right in the eye of the beholder. But this is a fantastic track and, as the song title itself suggests, you may have been here once before and I know you'll want to come back for more.

For more information: http://www.hypnotique.net/