Like all Fionas albums, Extraordinary Machine has fantastic, creative lyrics backed up with a wonderful voice and perfect instrumentation.

So where does it fall short? - the mastering, sadly someone made the decision to have the album mastered by "Big Bass" Brian Gardner who is famous in the industry for making 'hot' or overly loud recordings.

Perhaps having the volume turned up to 11 works for hip hop albums, but it does Fiona no favours here. Having the volume level almost constant all the way through just makes it tiring to listen to.

There are leaked MP3's floating around the net which contain early studio recordings of Extraordinary Machine, although clearly unfinished the leaked tracks sound better simply because you can hear the full dynamic range of the music.

While it's far from being the worst victim of the 'loudness war' it could have been so much more.