The impact of electronics and digital technology on our existence is no longer a whimsical excursion into science fiction. It has become a part of our everyday existence and seems to demand a response from the arts. That response has, in the main, been one of somewhat self-conscious appropriation. Aesthetic integration has shyly shown its face, but in jazz there are still a lot of recordings that ‘sound’ as if they could have been made in the 1950s; it's almost as if The Beatles never happened, never mind the onset of the digital age. Certainly, since the new millennium there have been bands performing live with laptops, looping, and real time sampling but with the exception of Miles Davis music concreté in the 1970s and a few bands that emerged in the nu-jazz explosion in Scandinavia circa 2005 (and its offshoot Punkt), electronics has not yet succeeded in what Milton Babbit has claimed for classical music, in shifting musical boundaries.

The jazz mainstream has tended to sidestep the issue, yet electronics, when thoughtfully integrated, can produce an enduring and aesthetic response. On Looking at Sounds, Benita, Dumoulin and Garcia intervene in real time with subtle electronic colour washes that seem to float through the music like early morning mist. Michel's flugelhorn and lead voice is measured and thoughtful, taking simple melodic motifs up this back street, along that lane, around the park and back again in a music that creates a mellow ambience while avoiding the label ambient.