A transplanted Brit living in Asia, Rob Allen (Perfect Blue) has been making a winning brand of delicate but striking electronic for a few years now. As Nisei23, his work has been gaining a small but solid crowd on the web. ?Milenka? is his first release, and this EP showcases the production and compositional prowess that have earned him his notice.

The four tracks on this short release pulse slowly but deliberately, ambient drone mixing with harder electronic, especially on ?Fall.? Another highlight is ?Yoko,? which is Eno-esque in its soundscape. Niseei23 manages to both find sound within environments and enhance them.

Call ?Milenka? a sort of Music for Inner Spaces. Allen has many ideas and most of them work; those ideas are subtle, and almost always organic. With ambient music, there has to be something more, beyond tone for its own sake, to be truly effecting. There is just too much of it out now, and not all space is filled well by it. Allen has an ear for the deeper potential of ambient, and this is a good introduction to his sound, and to the world the creates with them. 7/10 -- Mike Wood (15 April, 2008)