Elaine Lachica is a quality artist. You can tell this by the press pack that accompanies her cd. Why have a cd case when you can have a clear blue document folder, why supply a photocopied press release when you've got colour printing and semi transparent film paper, why indeed. Reading her biog it's clear we're dealing with no half baked bedsit singer songwriter. Elaine has been to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and travelled to the UK on a scholarship for the Royal College of Music. She's collaborated with professional sounding bodies (New York Collegium anyone?) and had radio play on stations with weird names like WERG.

So you can assume 9 does not feature someone doing their best Alanis Morissette impersonation while strumming G, D, and C. No, Elaine makes the kind of dream state classical sound favoured by Enya, occasionally interspersed with more upfront influences like Tori Amos. There are 9 songs here (surprise, surprise), all designed for sitting down to in a concert hall. Fourth track, The Door, is a typical example, all cascading piano lines, clawing strings, and vocal notes held for as long as breath allows.

The actual production is of an exceptionally high quality, on par with anything a major label has thrown at a coffee table in the last decade. With a bit of luck one of them will hear this and license it immediately. Not a cd I'd personally buy but the appeal is obvious.