New York-raised, Berlin-based, multimedia artist JJ Weihl has produced a sophomore album under her alias Discovery Zone. While first, Remote Control, was released on Mansions and Millions, the second has been signed to RVNG Intl. Working closely with Frenchman Etienne “E.T.” Tippex, the former member of experimental ensemble Fenster has created a new 15-track collection.

Several shorts help set the sonic scene. In fact, half of the album consists of romantic, soft-focus, interludes. Miniatures made up of synthesised sighs, and swells, pretty picked 6-string patterns, delicately descending drones, and cascading arpeggios. The songs themselves are a sort of blissed-out, 16-bit, post-Art Of Noise affair. Full of glassy glissandos and fractured, Fairlight-like choral vocals. To my ears at least, there’s also, perhaps, the influence of the sugary, electronics commissioned during the 1980s by the Chappell library music house – crystalline confections that had a big impact on Seahawks later output.

Ur Eyes contains gentle touches, strokes, of tremolo guitar and percussion shaken like showers of shooting stars. All Dressed Up With Nowhere To Go rides a cute Casio keyboard tick tock. Undressed is its beatless, gated, dubbed-out, reprise. Throughout, JJ is an auto-tuned angel, and the results are like a very shiny, very polished version of HTRK. Serenades for robots, Ai, in love. Pieces like Pair A Dice and Mall Of Love are knowingly `80s flavoured electro-pop. The latter features crashing and rolling syn-drums, a la Phil Collins’ In The Air Tonight, and sultry sax that calls back to the clarinet in Soft Cell’s classic, Say Hello, Wave Goodbye.

One of the standouts, in my humble opinion, Operating System, kicks off all kosmische bubbling, before bright synths, in Suzanne Ciani-esque new age waves, transform it into a cool, chilled Balearic beat. Jane Penny’s flute introducing an organic element, and positioning proceedings somewhere between Malcolm McLaren’s Obalata and Innovative Communications’ Software. Test is another highlight, whose racing heartbeat snare and general level of sophistication adds Haruomi Hosono, and his protégées – the super stylish Mikado and Dip In The Pool – to the list of musical references. The line about “Chasing sunsets to the land of your dreams” is sublime.

Discovery Zone’s Quantum Web is out now on RVNG Intl.