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At what point do your sonic motifs become a sign of waning creativity? For how long can you continue to perfect your preferred production techniques; continue to hone your idealised sound, before the tide of popular opinion turns against you? This is no doubt an issue for Camea and her Berlin based Clink Recordings, even if she hasn't herself yet realised it.

For the latter part of the naughties the label released good quality minimal with a recognisable footprint (something too many copycats failed to do) but more than a year after Camea's own ‘Happy Ending' EP with its click-clack noises, whirring fans and piston-pump textures, this, her latest release, sounds largely the same. It's not bad, to be sure, and 18 months ago may well have been standout, but in 2010 it's hard to get excited by another dry, rolling and super precise techno cut.

‘Kaleidoscope' is a spooky 5am plod through polished production which draws to mind a blustery forest walk during twilight. The constant swirling winds which spiral around the beat add a sense of space, but don't really draw you in.

‘Trampoline' is a rigid workout that's neither bounce-y enough to make you go ‘yeah' nor propulsive enough to really grab you by the balls. The spiralling breeze of the first track is replaced with horizontal, rippling keys but they rather go against the overriding up-down motion of the beat and end up sounding too disengaged from the rest of the sounds as a result.

The delightfully entitled ‘Flirt Locker' is another relentlessly tight construction which leaves little room to breathe, little room in which to get lost and passes by, as a result, without really engaging head or heel.

And so we come to final track, ‘Both Hands' which sticks out as conspicuously as would Elton John on the Berghain dance floor. It's a bleeding, well paced and Basic Channel indebted dub techno cut (is there any other sort?) which spreads out around you and oozes through your being for eight blissful minutes. In its restraint, its focus on the lateral and its watery raindrop textures, ‘Both Hands' rescues this EP, Camea, and Clink, for at least another day.

Artist: Camea Title: Kaleidoscope Pt. 1 Label: Clink Recordings Tracklist Kaleidoscope Trampoline The Flirt Locker Both Hands www.clinkrecordings.com www.myspace.com/c4me4 Our rating: 4/10