"Most curious. Little pieces of chamber music from Virginia, a natural heiress to Beatrix Potter if ever there was one, featuring a suspiciously unsullied schoolgirl ballad and a couple of bashful instrumentals, with much tasteful violin (plucked and bowed) and battered music-room piano."

"Virginia Astley is like Kate Bush reincarnated as Sebastian Flyte: at times the tinny choral tones are stretched as thinly as a sliver of smoked salmon at a vicar's tea party, but they're more than compensated for by those quaint l'il ol' stringed instruments."

"It would be easy to lay into this stuff, but it DOES have real charm and value. It's not for me, but it does knock the fake-musical pretensions of the Cocteau Twins and their well-fed ilk into their proper place."

Zig Zag