Charlie has assembled quite a cast of friends for this his debut album; there are two High Llamas, one Stereolabber and one member of the uber-cool Metronomy on board.

Home/Hidden, a largely instrumental affair, sounds like a semi-acoustic Air or Royksopp, a little more chilled out and with a richer string driven sound that only real instruments can add. It’s somewhere between a fifties cocktail jazz album and the bedtime hour on ClassicFM (if there is such a thing) – but in a good way.

Kicking off with Plan9, the music that will backdrop Take-Hart’s The Gallery in the year 2525, complete with Robot-Tony-Hart, the album meanders along fuzzily for just over half an hour.

Fransisca’s Theme is the most straightforward of the tunes on the album – achingly beautiful strings over a softly bubbling vibraphone. The strings are back with maximum effect on Cortot No6, a delightful slice of chamber music that threatens on a number of occasions to mutate into a drum and bass track and one which remixers will be itching to get their hands on. Elsewhere, things are usually mixed up a little more with the addition of treated piano, a Theremin and even the ingenious use of typewriter keys and bell as percussion on Mao, possibly the most inventive use of a rhythm track since Brian Wilson taped Paul McCartney chopping carrots for the Smiley Smile track Vegetables.

There’s a very cinematic feel to this – Telephone Song would make an ideal piece of incidental music, with its jaunty yet haunty piano and slightly discordant harpsichord sound. Expect to hear various bits and bobs from this album crop up in adverts and TV shows and in a couple of years time when you’re nestled in your cinema seat making a mental note to check the credits to find out who wrote the score, don’t be at all surprised to read the name Charlie Alex March.

Home/Hidden is released February 1^st on LoAF Recordings.

Charlie Alex March’s Myspace is here.