Rating: four stars

IF top quality ambient music is comparable to an aural impressionist work, then Melody AM is Waterlilies.

An impressive debut opens with a strafing note lifted straight from The Beach soundtrack but crooners' classic Blue on Blue slowly comes into focus beneath a smooth biorhythmic beat.

The album, a meticulous alloy of diverse ingredients, has been welded into a delicious organic whole by Tromso boys Svein Berge and Torbjorn Brundtland and is a work of art.

Nominally Melody AM consists of 10 tracks but they melt quite deliberately into a funk, soul and above all ambient odyssey that wraps around your soul and conjures up the Northern Lights and arctic wastes so familiar to the Norwegian duo.

A Higher Place is the title of part of this uplifting Scandinavian symphony but could justly be applied to the whole.

One of the most exhilarating debuts for a while, there is more to come from the boys from the fjords so get working on your pronunciation.

MH