If I'm not mistaken, E luxo so is Portugese for "It's only luxury." It's also the name of a well-known Samba standard by Ary Barroso, but as far as I can tell that's entirely coincidental. E luxo so certainly isn't Labradford's stab at samba, but it is luxuriant. Slow, blurry guitars and keyboards ooze across pliable sonic landscapes, followed at a safe distance by subtle samples and loops, a dulcimer and, to very elegant effect, a string section. Reluctant percussion lurks in the wings, as if unwilling to do more than hold these compositions to the most laissez-faire of rhythmic frameworks. The result is six tracks of gently off-kilter pastoral minimalism. Take, for example, "Dulcimers played by Peter Neff, strings played" (Labradford have apparently combined track titles and album credits into a single entity), a sedate combination of keyboard and strings that seems best suited to stately homes, garden parties and other turn of the (19th) century grandeur -- until, smack dab in the middle of the music, someone in the studio drops something. The music stops dead with an abrupt clatter, but the tape remains rolling while the errant object is retrieved. When the music returns, its grandeur seems forced and unreal. Other tracks are perhaps less deliberate with their melodies, more enveloping with their ambience, but the air of subverted lucidity remains constant throughout E luxo so. The listener is invited to join the organic mass of the music, compiling these sonic conceptualizations into an inner travelogue. To make this voyage is a luxury indeed.