At times overly smooth and straying a bit too close to mindless acid jazz, Braddell's solo debut nonetheless carries promising weight, with detailed ambient and dub textures filling out opium-inspired slow-breaks and begging deep, reclined (and, as the title implies, singular) listening. The domestic Shadow reissue adds a second CD of remixes and bonus tracks.

Chillout albums were all the rage during the early 2000s, but despite the attention, no one had made a record quite like Funki Porcini's Fast Asleep since the glory days of ambient techno, when the Orb's "A Huge Ever-Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From the Centre of the Ultraworld" merged Tangerine Dream, the Mad Professor, and Larry Heard into a collage of pastoral bliss. Fast Asleep, though obviously functional in a variety of contexts, wasn't designed to soundtrack trips back from the clubs or lazy nights at home with friends, and as such, it neatly side-steps the conscious hipness that usually compromises chillout records. James Braddell, a downbeat veteran stretching back more than a decade, crafted Fast Asleep to move in and out of its framework, with lengthy transitions introducing - or deconstructing - virtually every production…