If Appliance had a time machine, they'd be straight off to the future. But not to see if we still watch TV, eat cakes and play football, or to find out whether star wars - episode 57 is any good, but to see what the music of the future is really like. For Appliance, with all their dodgy art pretension and sub-moog atnospherics, seem to fancy themselves as a band for the 21st Century and would surely love to see their vision of the future come true.

Sadly, and in more real terms, we all know that there's about as much chance of Appliance travelling through time as there is of digging a six foot hole with a cocktail stick. So it is a great shame that in this tired, dark and primitive age that we live, Appliance sound little better than a dodgy indie band having a volume fight with a Kraftwerk tribute group in a pub back room.

Manual could be so good... the ideas are there, the band ethos is there, and the ambition seeps out in bucketfuls. But songs such as Food Music, Throwing A Curve Ball and Soft Landing just don't quite hit it home, staying confusingly short of the mark. That said, some tracks just don't make an impact, Hot Pursuit having all the energy of a tricycle chasing a cat.

Manual could have been a great album if only it wasn't so precocious. Tunes just aren't where they should be, choruses are never there to satisfy and singalong tunes are sacrificed for self-indulgence.

If this is the music of the 21st century then I'm staying in on New Year's Eve.

4/10 Karl Cremin.

Album Reviews
The Music Bar