Listening to Pictures (Pentimento Volume One)

A pentimento is an earlier image showing through paint laid over it, and Hassell built the album the same way: fragments of performance sampled, looped, overdubbed and rearranged until earlier layers showed through later ones. He told Ableton the process was like watching a plant grow in slow motion, and that almost everyone listens horizontally while he wanted music heard vertically. To The Vinyl Factory he said the less visible the technology, the better. The album is dedicated to the painter Mati Klarwein, whose family let him draw on motifs from Klarwein's paintings; goat bells Hassell recorded at Klarwein's house in Mallorca in 1995 sound behind Pastorale Vassant. During the making he reconnected with Brian Eno, who had no direct part in it.

It reached 34 on both the UK Dance and UK Independent album charts and scored 84 on Metacritic. The Guardian gave it four stars and set it beside Oneohtrix Point Never, Boards of Canada and Aphex Twin, and Uncut called it a magnificent comeback. The Quietus found the production slicker than his old records, but full of detail.