Bows' gimmick, if you want to call it that, is to combine lush, ornate orchestral sounds (strings, horns, etc.) with drum'n'bass percussion. The resulting music is gorgeous in a stately, mannered sort of way, rather like In the Nursery/Les Jumeaux (but stripped of any significant intellectual payload) or Barry Adamson's more ornate, instrumental compositions. Narcoleptic female vocals pervade throughout, lending these tunes an air of opulent decadence. Luke Sutherland, whose name you might recognize if you read a lot of Long Fin Killie and Mogwai liner notes, is the mind behind Bows; he shows solid compositional ability here, particularly on the universally praised single "Big Wings". The single deserves its reputation -- it's a stirring seven-minute tour-de-force in which horns and strings billow and swell like approaching storm clouds, held back by the brittle-but-beautiful vocal pleadings of Signe Hoirup Wille-Jorgensen. "Brittanica", "Rockets" and the title track offer similar moments of perfection, but Blush is not, in itself, perfect. As is too often the case with the material opulence it mirrors, the disc all-too-easily descends into the languid decadence of overstimulation -- or to put it more succinctly, while troweling on the aural luxuries, Sutherland occasionally forgets that he needs to make his music interesting. You'll probably love Blush, but for best results we strongly encourage you to limit your dosage.