There's a middle ground between Portishead and Massive Attack, and that's where the Controls live. Hip-hoppier than the former, cheerier than the latter, the Controls create a sonic landscape of face-slapping beats and knife-edge scratching, tempered by a host of live string and wind instruments and bolstered by an eclectic array of genre-crossed samples. Ann Colville provides torch-singer vocals for all occasions, while Dub-L sets down the highly-populated backdrop of keyboards (including the nigh-essential Moog), guitar and miscellaneous technical jiggery-pokery. Ultimately, it's production whiz-bang that wins the day for the Controls and helps them rise above the current crop of funereally-paced trip-hop outfits -- there's often enough ear-jolting samplejockey stuff going on during and between songs that it's possible to be fooled into thinking you're listening to an EBN or Bomb Squad-styled multimedia assault. Creative sample selection plays a big role, too -- "Shadow of a Man," for instance, pillages from the Modern Mandolin Quartet (including a "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" loop), while "Terrified of Nothing" rehabilitates a lame Spencer Brewer take on "Ukranian Carol". Beyond its samples, One Hundred doesn't really tread much uncharted territory, but it gets where it's going in style and the ride is far from dull.