You’ll know Dot Allison, whether you think you know it or not, as the perfectly sweet angelic foil to Death In Vegas’ dour military-esque drive on ‘99’s epic soiled diamond of a tune, ‘Dirge’. Before that, in hazy early 90s acid-house days she gave vocals to scene pioneers One Dove. Her debut solo album, out in ’99 on Heavenly, kind of got lost in the slipstream and the Death In Vegas collaboration may have done criminally less for her than say the Chemical Brothers did for Beth Orton, but here she is in 2002 returning with an album as perfectly formed and as aware of itself, and all around it, as the title so rightly suggests. It’s like it’s here, you can contest it should you wish, but it’s all fact. Just listen. You can spin it round to see the workings if you’re still doubting.
It’s such a precise arrangement of electronic pop’s g-spots, guaranteed to get the juices flowing in the right directions, your temples pumping at the correct velocity, building with every one of the right intentions. Her voice itself is the unperturbed temptress, conducting all around it, keeping it in line, never losing sight of its objective. She never gives in to the poisoned apple that sends Beth Gibbons into an emotional spin, giving it more of a Sarah Cracknel seductive moderator feel. When you can feel the sunshine peeping through, she blossoms like colourful ivy and when the shadows take over she seals it all with an ice queen gleam. Darkly joyous, perfectly in control, dominating, but not awkwardly so, always.
Opening track ‘We’re Only Science’, with its increased detachment, seeps into awareness like Death In Vegas’ ‘Aisha’ spun out over a Balearic sunset, ending up strobing in the dark. Floating between the Human League dressed up as Daft Punk on the clinically sterile (in a totally pure way) ‘Substance’, Add N to (X) glee on ‘I Think I Love You’, out whoring Shirley Manson with a stolen Queen bass-line on ‘Make It Happen’ and out glitzing Sophie Ellis Baxter’s faux-elegance on the scuzzy simmering pop of ‘Strung Out’, she covers all the basses she could reasonably expected to without tweaking those facial muscles ever so slightly too much. The perfect summer album then, for all its shades.