Peter Gabriel: UP. I saw an article about the upcoming album some months before it came out. It had a picture of Gabriel. The years have not been kind. He looked old and kind of beaten down. So while I expected the new stuff to be quality, I also expected it to be heading out to the VH-1 pasture of bland "adult contemporary." Wrong. If you like Peter Gabriel, this is probably his strongest work. I say that as a longtime fan who could probably play every note of "Security" out of a jack in my skull. If you've never liked Peter Gabriel, this won't convert you. The songs move his style forward while simultaneously being a kind of career retrospective. Sounds you've heard on dozens of other pg tunes show up here in new contexts, old friends like David Rhodes and Tony Levin play with new collaborators like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. The only thing missing is the typical Big Radio Hit, and I don't think anyone who really appreciates this man's music will miss it. We may have had to wait ten years, but who's complaining?

Cliff Martinez: Solaris. Big surprise here. I don't care for soundtracks - the music tends to be simple, manipulative, unstructured, incidental. I don't buy soundtracks or pay much attention to them. And yet, from the first sequence of Soderberg's film, I was nailed in my seat by Martinez' score. In fact, there are several places in this film where the music simply walks away with the scene. This music is elegant, powerful, and fresh. Martinez has scored for orchestra and gamelan, and uses some coloristic effects that remind me of both the interludes from Britten's "Peter Grimes" and Reich's "Variations for Strings, Woodwinds, and Keyboards." His basic approach is long sustained tones with various instruments fading in and out, set against gentle pulsing and chiming from the gamelan. The pieces on the disc are all fairly short and presented in the same order in which they appear in the film, which makes for a listening experience both frustrating and tantalizing. Some very definite structural ideas are driving all of the music, in particular a four-chord progression over a three-note pedal bass. But the ideas don't progress or play themselves out in any coherent manner, which leaves me with the impression that I'm hearing short excepts from a longer finished work, in random order. Which, given the subject matter, is strangely appropriate. There are numerous moments that perfectly capture memory and grief. Compelling, beautiful, and completely surprising.

"Point" by Cornelius. If you stop reading after this paragraph, you'll still do OK. This is the album of the year, period. Cornelius is Keigo Oyamada - a lone studio wizard with an affinity for the Beach Boys, Steve Reich, Smashing Pumpkins, Ary Barroso, Orbital, Yes, and XTC. Plus a bunch of other stuff. It's all re-processed from his singular point of view and handed back to us in the form of acoustic guitar, weightless vocals, a Roland CR-78 drum machine, the sounds of birds, insects, and water, and some of the most advanced engineering and production I've ever heard. This is the future of pop music. Twenty years from now, people will listen to this and wonder how the hell he did it. You can hear it now.

Lunatic Calm: Breaking Point. Highly technological rock music, or perhaps techno in leather pants. Breaking Point is full of strong guitar hooks and stronger beats. Shack's vocals have a Robert-Plant-sized swagger, but so much attention is given to each inflection that I'm pretty sure he's winking at us. LC has given up on trying to cash in on the big beat trend and made an album that feels much more authentic than Metropol. Some of it rages, some of it is slow and slinky, very little of it is boring.

Six Degrees Records:. Anything, really. Toby Marks (Banco de Gaia) founded this label in '99, it promises to be this decade's answer to Peter Gabriel's RealWorld. Thus far, everything I've picked up has been uniformly excellent (though DJ Cheb i Sabbah is a house favorite). You might want to begin with the Travels series. Here, instead of offering selections of electronic music that has appropriated various ethnic musics, Six Degrees has travelled the world in search of ethnic musics that have appropriated western electronica. Arabian hip-hop? You'll dig it.

System 7: Seventh Wave. For the last three outings, Miquette Giraudy and husband Steve Hillage have struck a balance between highly personal expressions and straightforward (if wholly unique) trance. This may be their best yet. The dance tunes have completely rekindled my love of the genre, and then it gets better. The slower, more contemplative moments are a big step forward for the duo. Hillage's guitar, usually restricted to long tones or delay loops, has been brought to the foreground. His "digital" style and Giraudy's increasingly human sequencing have converged at a point of exquisite craft.

Matmos: A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure. More musique concrete weirdness from Matmos. This time, most of the tunes are assembled from samples taken of various plastic surgeries. There's a liposuction track, a rhinoplasty track, a LASIK track, etc. As usual, some of the experiments work better than others, but the high points are quite remarkable. At their best, Matmos uses granular synthesis techniques to assemble a wide range of sounds from their source material, which are then arranged with longer samples to create a musical experience that's at once surprising and clearly linked to a context. At their worst, it's a bunch of weird noises in minimal house arrangements that still manages to be kind of funky. There's a lot more here than novelty value - Matmos is Serious Experimental Stuff all right, but they also have a sense of humor and a lot of solid musicianship.

Bjork: Selmasongs. If you like her more "30s musical style" material ("It's Oh So Quiet", "Bachelorette", "Hidden Place"), you'll need her soundtrack to Dancer in the Dark. It's very short, but there's not a moment of filler.

Boards of Canada: Geogaddi. Did you like Music Has the Right to Children? Well OK then, go get this. Geogaddi isn't really a step forward, and in truth it's only about 80% of the record "Music" was. But all the pieces are here: the warm, slightly out-of-tune vintage synths, oblique beats, indistinct sounds of children laughing and talking, and so forth. The new album feels less directed, even vague in places. I'm a little bit frustrated with it, but I'm also willing to accept the possibility that this is exactly what BoC intended. Their music seems to be primarily about memory, and the way it is distorted by time. With all the cues pointing to early childhood, the hazy character of the music could well be perfect renderings of hazy recollections. Either way, it's a fine way to spend an hour.

Aphex Twin: drukqs. Having taken a nice long break, Richard James returns with a Major Statement. At once a big step forward and a career retrospective, this two-disc set covers an impressive range of styles and ideas. His new, insanely fast and abstract version of drum and bass dominates both discs, but fully half of the material touches on the beatless and claustrophobic ambience of SAW2, the groove-heavy arrangements of i care because you do... and the retro instrumentation of Richard D. James and Boy/Girl. My suspicion that he was padding out the album with old unused tracks was immediately laid to rest - each of these modes is expressed at James' current level of sophistication. Then there are the piano pieces. Scattered throughout are short interludes for prepared piano. It sounds like a gimmick, and some of the pieces are definitely throwaways, but it's obvious he intends several of them to be taken seriously. The other big surprise is that the usual ratios of an Aphex Twin disc are not in effect here. We're used to 1/3 inventive quasi-genre tracks, 1/3 genuine genius, and 1/3 self-indulgent crap. has The crap portion is missing from drukqs. This is not easy listening, however; the frequent changes in tone alone make this a challenging two hours. More coherence would have made for a easier album to enjoy. As is, I find myself skipping through the tracks according to mood, and regarding the whole with more admiration than fondness. But perhaps that's to be expected from a Major Statement.

The Future Sound of London: The Isness. Big things have happened to FSOL in the last seven years. Judging from nothing more than this record, I'd say they've been through an immense amount of personal and artistic growth. They've also been listening to a lot of Spiritualized. This will be an easier album to hear if you just forget about Dead Cities, ISDN, and all the rest of it all the way back to Papua New Guinea. This is a new band, and "band" is the appropriate term. They play guitar. They play drums. They do whole orchestral arrangements. And, my god, they're singing. While the arrangements reflect an unmistakable electronic background, the content is almost entirely organic. Elegant small-ensemble pieces (that are quite obviously realized with extensive digital post-processing) sit side-by-side with anthemic and expansive sing-alongs. The high point is "Yes, My Brother," a seven-minute rock and orchestra extravaganza that even Spaceman would envy, but one that oddly enough would be just as moving sung by three people around a campfire. It's not just the whole musical approach that's changed, either. the attitude is radically different. While their ambition remains intact, the arrogance and pretense that colored their earlier efforts is entirely missing. This time out, they appear unconcerned that their reach sometimes exceeds their grasp. It's the yearning that matters. The Isness is warm, intimate, and sincere - words I never thought I'd use to describe FSOL. This is definitely taking some getting used to. But I'm finding the very parts I found most off-putting on first listen are the very ones that come to me as I'm waking up or driving. They've taken a huge chance here, and I think it's paying off.

Waterjuice: Hydrophonics. Meaty, mighty slices of dub from two guys who speak it like a native language. The heart of "Hydrophonics" is a beat ranging from a stoner stumble to a driving dancefloor monster, and flowing through it is a river of nasty, funky, slinky bass. The other parts of ensemble are fresh synth textures, deftly arranged percussion, and a touch of fuzzed-out guitar, augmented in places with what sounds like a human drummer who is not afraid to drop an ass-kicking breakbeat into a dub tune.

Deviant Electronics Blunt Instruments. We're getting past the point where using electronica's micro-genres is helpful in describing good music. Talented composers are unwilling to submit to the dictates of "jungle" or "dub" or "trance." Enter Deviant Electronics. D.E. tracks have popped up in places as diverse as Transient Goa compilations and psychedelic ambient discs. And this full-length album lives up to their eclectic past. With the exception of one fairly workmanlike d-n-b track, 'Blunt Instruments' is an entire album of stellar music that will not be pigeonholed. Each track shows a meticulous attention to detail and an unwillingness to do the obvious - drum lines change almost constantly, and much use is made of timbral and melodic contrasts. And the musical content of those melodies commands listener attention. This is not treble filler over a beat. Rather, D.E. is giving us fully conceived and brilliantly executed pieces of music. The parts all work so well together that at times it's easy to think you're hearing four or five human performers playing as tightly as a good jazz combo. Can you dance to it? Yes. Does it need to be played in a club at 110db to impress the hell out of you? No.

Bjork: Vespertine. What to say? In spite of all reasonable expectations, she has topped 1998's 'Homogenic.' Her new collaborators are sophisticated sample-masters Matmos, and with their restrained idiosyncrasies, a string ensemble, and a number of specially-built music boxes, Bjork delivers 40 minutes of music that's at once delicate and powerful. Vespertine has a hushed quality about it, but that can suddenly turn into a full river of orchestral sound. I hate to use words like "ethereal" and "grandeur" in a review, since they've had the life sucked out them by hundreds of Cocteau Twins reviews, but here they are fully deserved. I'll mention one song only. In "Heirloom," Bjork sings of a dream where her mother and son float over her bed, pouring warm oil down her throat to cure her lost voice. It's like nothing so much as a Marc Chagall painting cast into song. Astonishing.

Ooze: Where the Fields Never End. Swedish future-dub from Germany's Spirit Zone label. Sebastian Mullaert avoids the cliches of the genre and focuses on subtlety and craft. In 'Fields,' we're treated to a truly melodic sense of bass, glittering synth textures, and tasteful, restrained arrangements. The album is full of left turns, where you think you know what's coming, and then are surprised by something considerably cleverer. This isn't a landmark in electronic music, but Mullaert writes music with such effortless tunefullness that this disc has been in heavy rotation for months. It's one to keep coming back to, and then saying, "Wow, this is really good."

Solea Amphibia: Stratosphear. A promising if uneven debut from Lars-Marcus Jungnell. This is cool and dry downtempo with a strong emphasis on dense layers of clean electronic timbres, propelled by gentle beats. The tracks tend to meander a bit, but Jungnell has a command of texture and mood that's well ahead of his structural and melodic ideas. When the pieces come together, he perfectly captures a highly detailed and specific ambience. When they don't, 'Stratosphear' remains entirely listenable. Expect a great album from this man sometime in the very near future.

Talvin Singh: HA. Singh's latest offers a more consistent listening experience than 'OK.' Where that album went from hard dance music to expansive film soundtrack scores (and many points in between), 'HA' sticks to the groove. This isn't a dumbing-down of his ideas, however - what's happened with this album is that Singh is getting better at making all of his peculiar interests work together in a single tune. Which makes nearly every track an adventure of gorgeous classical Indian textures, nimble bass work, blistering tabla playing, Ustad Sultan Khan's traditional singing, and Singh's own unique not-quite-sung, not-quite-rapped storytelling. And the whole thing is built on clever beats that will make you get up and move. The whole disc is bursting with bright and delightful ideas, all carried off with a master's light touch.

Squarepusher: Go Plastic.With this release, Tom Jenkins turns away from the jazz influences of 'Music Is Rotted One Note' and pushes the boundaries in his other favorite direction: manic, mechanical complexity. This disc has accessible and even catchy moments, but the main focus here is incredibly dense stretches of carefully-assembled sound, joined by lightning-quick segues. If you're not paying attention, some of this sounds almost like random noise. The listener is not expected to be dancing and socializing for this outing - he or she is expected to keep up. While definitely not a record for everyone, 'Go Plastic' represents the cutting edge of drum and bass, and turns the tropes of this genre into something cerebral and challenging.

Makyo: Yakshini.Gio Makyo is quietly building a body of work that will likely turn him into a legend. Combining a native understanding of Indian music with a keen sense of thematic development and understated synth work, his music is calm and engrossing. 'Yakshini' picks up where 'Sringara' left off, with a set of seven pieces that stand by themselves and also create a nearly 80-minute long arc. A wide variety of moods and arrangements are employed, with Makyo playing many more 'real' instruments than he has in the past. While the production and ambience are at their highest point yet in Makyo's career, there are a few minor flaws. Some of the slower passages veer into vague New-Age territory, and the 20-minute title track, for all its many surprises, is somewhat aimless. But the presence of 'Tantrika' and 'Soar Angelic' could redeem much more serious shortcomings.

Plaid: Double Figure.Plaid continues to get better and better, and their latest is nothing short of consistently amazing. This is electronic music with its humanity intact, and I frequently find myself thinking, "this is just so musical." Plaid makes no effort to conceal their diverse influences, and yet their eclectic collection of styles has been filtered through enough individual quirks to sound both fresh and unique. Electronics are here arranged with surprising sampled material and a fair amount well-played guitar, drums, and keyboards. In 17 tracks, the plastic duo weaves through delicate, frivolous, lush, cerebral, and austere modes, all with equal confidence and success. Assured, mature, accessible, and equally rewarding on the dancefloor and in a pair of headphones. Very highly recommended.

Autechre: Confield.I don't really know what to make of Autechre's release for 2001. In the past eight years, their sound has become increasingly pared-down and abstract, but here I have to wonder if the off-putting face of their music hasn't become a goal in itself, rather than a side effect of other imperatives. Of the nine tracks on 'Confield,' three are what appear to be entirely random collages of noise, and are, after repeated attempts, completely unlistenable. The other six are examples of such militant minimalism that there's almost nothing left to listen to. Where even the most challenging passages of 'EP7' held subtleties and surprises for the alert listener, 'Confield' seems to offer nothing but repetitious scraping and clanking. All of which is a way of saying I don't really like this disc at all, which comes as something of a shock, given that up to know, every release has only moved this band closer to my heart.

Autechre: Peel Session 2.Autechre's second Peel Session disc is as much of a treasure as the first, containing four easy lessons about the present state of electronic music. The four tracks here represent Autechre at their finest. From chilly stillness to uncentered propulsion to nigh-impenetrable mazes of sound, each selection shows Booth and Brown at their peak. Abstract, intense, and uniformly excellent.

Sun Electric: Present.Before Thomas Fehlman hooked up with Alex Patterson and started recording with the Orb, he was part of Sun Electric. And from listening to this 1996 disc, it's easy to see why Patterson picked him as a collaborator - the man's an electronic virtuoso. Sounding at times like a long-lost Orb album and at times like nothing else I've ever heard, this is one the best discs I've ever spun. The tone on this album is warm and organic, with beats that hide their intelligence with a light touch, and buoyant melodies that wheel and transform themselves with no hint of effort. The Sun Electric Sounds is as uncategorizable as Plaid's, simultaneously expressing a keen interest in everything from classical music to punk and a strong personal identity that's undiluted by its many influences. This one is essential listening. Find it now.

Scala: Beauty Nowhere.Scala's second effort continues a thread of almost-pop. The ambiguous moods and delicate textures bring early 4AD bands to mind, but these pieces never really come together as songs. This isn't criticism. Scala's experiments hit their targets, but while they make use of pop arrangements, pop is far from their central concerns of ambience. 'Beauty Nowhere' makes use of strong contrasts to evoke moods from troubled to starkly beautiful. Expect clanky and angular patterns mixed with lilting vocals, and melodies emerging from and disappearing into noise. And then it wraps up with a cover of Blondie's 'Heart of Glass.' Perplexing and compelling.

Earth Rise: Deeper Than Space.The brief surge of ambient music in the early 90s produced a large number of one-compilation labels and one-disc artists. Adam Douglas' Earth Rise was one such. 'Deeper Than Space' is mainly a swampy, tepid affair that proves being the Orb is harder than it looks. I mention the recording, however, because of track 2, 'Spaceship Melody (With Dreams Without Numbers).' The title alone suggests a lot of what doesn't work on this album, but the track itself is nigh-perfect. The central role of the 303 will sound a little dated, but this is an elegantly conceived and executed piece of music. Well worth digging up.

Human Mesh Dance: Mindflower.A slightly more promising example of the early-90s ambient wavelet is HMD's 'Mindflower.' The reach here is modest, but never exceeds their grasp. The disc is calm, spacious, and cool, and gels into a solid groove in a couple of places. It is ambient in the functional sense of the word. One to keep an eye on the used bins for.

Heavenly Music Corporation: Consciousness III.According to my friend Paul, Consciousness III "is the one after they figured it out and before they ran out of ideas." If this represents HMC'c career peak, they really don't have anything to be ashamed of. Slinky textures weave in and out of the background, propelled by gentle rhythms. This is more music that approaches the area of audio wallpaper, but it never becomes aimless noodling. It is 'ambient' in Eno's sense - it works equally well listened to or ignored.

Silent Records (compilations): From Here to Tranquility 3, 5.Silent Records put out a number of decent ambient releases through the first half of the 90s, including the 'Tranquility' series. The compilations tend toward static soundscapes with hints of rhythm. I know that doesn't sound very exciting; neither are these discs. Most of the material here would be at home on 'Hearts of Space,' and some of it is about as close to New Age as you can get without finding yourself filed next to Yanni. If peaceful sounds tend me calm you down, these would be just the discs to end a stressful day. If, on the other hand, aimless noodling makes you irritable, best to avoid.

Matmos/Rachel's: Full On Night.Rachel's is a modern chamber ensemble performing their own music for theater and dance pieces. Led by pianist Rachel Grimes, their sound is stark, moody, and elegant. So naturally they should be remixed by cutting-edge musique concrete artists Matmos. 'Full On Night' contains a live performance of a piece by the same name from their 1995 debut, and an extended reinterpretation by Matmos. The remix is stimulating and challenging - distinctly uneasy listening. Don't expect to hear a single synth - Matmos remains absolutely faithful to their source material, slicing, dicing, and finding new areas of order and chaos in a completely acoustic piece of music. Experimental without being self-indulgent, and well worth the effort.

Roach, Steve & Vir Unis: Body Electric.Something unexpected from Steve's Roach's "All Goth, All the Time" Projekt label. This stab at psychedelic ambient works better than one would expect. The rhythm beds steer completely clear of cliche, relying on densely layered hand percussion and other non-Roland-generated beats. And over the rhythms one finds complex (if slow) patterns of dry, airy textures. The overall tone is dark and slightly foreboding, as befits the project's lineage, but this is definitely not a disc whose appeal is restricted to the black eyeliner crowd.

Hafler Trio: Thirsty Fish.This is my first foray into the extremely strange world of Hafler Trio. I've been told this is about the best of their work, but all I have to go on is this 60 minutes of oddness. 'Thirsty Fish' is an hour-long collage of just about every kind of sound you can conceive of. Speech, theater, construction, electronic blips and whirrs, and every kind of music imaginable, all crammed together in the space of two minutes. Then they do it all again, but completely different. The results are not the audio equivalent of zine collage artists - the work here is highly detailed, and a great deal of forethought has obviously gone into every decision. Still, that doesn't make it exactly listenable. I'm very glad I've heard this once, but I find myself not reaching for it again. It may be enough to simply know that someone has created such a thing.

Carlos, Wendy: Beauty in the Beast.A landmark recording in the history of electronic music has at long last been re-released. Carlos has always been more than a technological innovator. As a composer, her work stands on its own merits, and this disc represents her at her peak. 'Beauty' is one of the first recordings to exclusively employ digital synthesis techniques (FM, PCM, additive, formant, etc.) and is largely realized on equipment of Carlos' own design. But what about the music? Well, it's groundbreaking in several ways. Most significantly, the use of digital synthesis completely frees the composer from any particular intonation, so Carlos takes advantage of this to write an entire suite of pieces that avoids the even-tempered scale. What we hear are several different scales based on the 'just intonation' found in central Asian and Indonesian music. While one might expect such ideas to be sterile and academic, the results are alluring and immediately accessible. The timbres are rich, expressive, and years ahead of their time, and they work beautifully in Carlos' remarkable compositions. The centerpiece of the disc is the sprawling 'Poem for Bali,' which takes several forms of gamelan as its inspiration. But it is perhaps topped by a later track where she writes music for a western symphony orchestra collaborating with a gamelan ensemble - music that cannot exist outside of the digital realm due to tuning differences. Very highly recommended, both for the adventurous listener and anyone interested in the history of electronic music.

Download: Effector. Effector picks up where 'III' left off, this time adding ideas from drum and bass to the mix, and skewing things in a more melodic direction. Everything I said about 'III' applies here, but 'Effector' is even better. Clearly one of the year's best releases.

Download: III.Cevin Key is full of surprises. After the end of Skinny Puppy, his Download project created two albums of dense, dark, and rewarding music that went well beyond the industrial genre while maintaining connections to its general ideas. With 'III,' however, Key and company are no longer content to be confined by external stylistic constraints. Download has moved toward their own sound, unique and fully-realized. There is still an element of darkness here, but it is no longer melodramatic and contrived. Instead, 'III' offers up a set of angular tracks propelled by aggressive beats, with a sizeable helping of odd twists and turns, and the occasional break into something truly beautiful. After a set this compelling and truly outstanding, we all need to stop thinking of Download as 'what happened after Skinny Puppy.' They are well on their way to creating a body of work substantially more meaningful.

Orb: Cydonia.A lot of critics have been very harsh with the latest from Patterson and company. Needlessly, I think. True, 'Cydonia' does not break new ground, and we've grown accustomed to being shown something completely new with every missive from the Ultraworld. But if anyone has earned the right to rest on laurels for a year or two, it's Alex Patterson. But does 'Cydonia' represent a slump? Hardly. What we've got here is 70 minutes of masterful music created by a man in complete control of his abilities. Longtime fans will probably be a little thrown by the presence of actual songs (sung by guests Aki Omori and Nina Walsh), but if you can get past the idea the Orb is trying their hand at pop, you'll find they know what they're doing. And the instrumental pieces, while not astounding, are simply flawless. Only the Orb can take an aggressive distorted guitar line and build into sunny bubbling dub. The hallmarks are all here: the music is sophisticated without pretension, good-natured without being vacuous, and covers a wide range of stylistic ground. 'Cydonia' doesn't make a smashing impression, but I've come back to it in the last few months more than just about any disc in the last year. There's something to be said for craft and consistent excellence.

Irresistible Force: It's Tomorrow Already.Mixmaster Morris's 1997 effort is an uptempo counterpart to 'Global Chillage.' Or relatively uptempo. It's full of deep dub bass, bright atmospheres, and odd sonic events fed into lovely analogue delays. You've heard this before, but if you like the sound, you'll want this. Of particular note, however, is 'Fish Dances' - a slow dance tune that's just relentlessly cheerful. A fine disc to wind down a long night.

Tabla Beat Science: Tala Matrix.Talvin Singh, Zakir Hussein, and several other tablists rock your lame ass with little interference from producer/bassist Bill Laswell. This is classical Indian percussion colliding with the idioms of modern electronica, and here they sound as if they were made for one another. The tracks are largely an environment for master musicians to interact with one another more or less spontaneously, so they aren't rigorously structured. However, there is enough variation and rigor involved to keep me from complaining about directionless jamming. The engineering is perfect, the arrangements are impeccably tasteful, and the beats fall like thunder.

Fila Brazillia: A Touch of Cloth. Funk, jazz, slices from a 1977 wine commercial,

Ju Ju Space Jazz: Intersound.The second LP from Australian nutjobs Ju Ju Space Jazz doesn't quite live up to the demented wonder of their debut, 'Shloop.' It's less coherent, and a few of the tracks fall a bit flat. It does, however, contain 'Undercover Mystic.' So I have to command you to seek it out and buy it. It's the epitome of all that is Ju Ju: Euro-dub meets lounge meets swing in a cartoon universe with a blistering trumpet solo. And it all works perfectly.

Mouse on Mars: Idiology.Andi Toma and Jan St. Werner have moved in a dramatically different direction from their purely electronic beginnings. Their last outing (Niun Nigging) brought in a number of guitars, horns and other acoustic instruments. 'Idiology' has taken this trend to the point where they are no longer the quirky electronic duo that gave us 'Autoditacker' - they are something more akin to a live ensemble. However, the new source of their sound hasn't led them to start writing anything like pop. The music is a wholly unique collage of electronics, jazz, and rock motifs, processed through a sensibility that is both idiosyncratic and completely consistent. I can't say that the new stuff really grabs me. But that's not a problem with the Mouse. I can hear that their direction is valid and their work is excellent - it simply doesn't speak to my tastes. But if you're interested in one possible direction electronica can go when it assumes a more human face, or you simply want to hear some music that's quite unlike anything else, this is well worth checking out.

Surreal Audio Records: Beats and Beyond compilation. David Smith (aka Dr Krelm) writes in to say: "It's like a socially inept anal rape-loving deviant that has seen one too many videos in the Mighty Mouse meets Faces of Death necro-superhero porno series deciding in the midst of an absinthe binge that he wants to make a nutty banana milkshake with his genitals and form a backwards-talking boy band with his transgendered mentally retarded siblings' quadruplet-love children. It kicks much ass and I think you'd absolutely love it." I guess I'll have to check it out.

Irresistible Force: Global Chillage. "It's time to lie down and be counted." So said Mixmaster Morris in 1994, and six years later, the ambient underground to which Global Chillage is dedicated is alive and well. Morris' debut album pits an appealing collection of synth riffs and samples against an army of digital delays. The results are dreamy, dense, and extremely listenable. Complexity is not the order of the day for Morris - as forward-looking as his sound may be, his music has more in common with the 70s ambient soundscapes of Eno and Harold Budd than the new compositional ideas of his peers in the Orb and FSOL. The sound here is lush and relaxing - each track begins in a good place, with motion and variety offering more of a casual tour of Morris' headspace than serving the development of theme. Global Chillage isn't exactly groundbreaking, but all it aims to be is an excellent place to spend an hour or so, and at that it succeeds completely.

Juno Reactor: Shango. Ben Watkins and company may have pioneered the Goa trance sound, but since then they have managed to utterly ignore everything that's happened in trance world. This means you'll never hear a JR track at a party, but it's great news for fans of good music. From the flamenco-trance of 'Pistolero' to the calm and stirring "Song for Ancestors," Juno Reactor reveal that they have far too much talent to be confined to any genre. Once again, Watkins has teamed up with the South African drumming troupe Amampondo, whose rhythmic virtousity propels most of Shango with a strength unmatched by machines. Alex Patterson is also along for the ride this time, which no doubt explains the thick textures and odd twists in the mix. While half of this disc keeps one foot in the trance idiom, I recommend it without reservation to anyone interested in innovative electronic music. But you'd better be prepared to shake your ass.

Mocean Worker: Aural & Hearty. After two impressive releases that essentially reinvented drum and bass, Adam Dorn has completely confounded expectations with his newest - a gleeful and goofy collection of danceable tunes without a jungle beat in sight. Where Home Movies from the Brainforest and Mixed Emotional Features were serious bordering on somber, Aural and Hearty is as fun-loving as the source of its title pun. Heavy grooves, funk allusions, and grin-inducing samples are the staple of this set, and even the more involved tracks are immediately accessible. This may not be a Major Work, but I'm encouraged to see that someone of Dorn's talent refuses to be constrained by ideas about genre and style. His complete self-reinvention on this disc may throw off some fans, but I'll be keeping up with him.

Plaid: Trainer. Billed as a collection of rarities and unreleased tracks spanning eleven years, Trainer looks like a fans-only offering. Surprisingly, this two-disc set not only features some of the duo's strongest material, it also serves as an excellent introduction to their quirky body of work. Fusing elements of house, funk, and pop into a base of idiosyncratic synth work, Plaid creates music at once strange and familiar. Don't be suprised to hear West African chants accompanying salsa piano and churning electronic beats. Consistently daring, but rarely exceeding their reach, Plaid (and their former incarnation, Black Dog Productions) has made a unique and significant contribution to the electronic idiom. Trainer is a must-have for fans and an excellent introduction to their music for anyone else.

Single Cell Orchestra: Single Cell Orchestra. How did I manage to overlook this? In 1996, Miguel Angelo Fierro recorded a minor masterpiece. Featuring lilting melodies, heavily treated vocals, and lush strings, SCO is a disc of poignant, fully-realized compositions. Of particular note is "Knockout Drops," which conveys an incredible (and incredibly human) sadness despite its digital origins. This is a personal and intense work, and its compositional strength and emotional depth more than make up for its slightly dated sound. Very highly recommended.

Toires: Qued. France faces a complex future. With over 100,000 immigrants arriving each year from its former North African colonies, this most European of countries faces a decade of hard issues over race, class, and religion that aren't so dissimilar from those of the American South. But this collision of cultures is always good for art, and nowhere is that better demostrated than on Qued. Islamic prayer chants and Arabic folk music are combined with European electronics with wonderful results. Unlike a great deal of so-called "world beat" music, which merely layers borrowed ethnic material over limp dance beats, Florian Seriot and his collaborators are realizing their own specific vision - one that includes both Morrocan tradition and modern technology, but which owes allegiance to neither. Qued is very much a product of the new century, and its tasteful and restrained arrangements represent a host of hopeful possibilities.

Bentley Rhythm Ace: For Your Ears Only. BRA has done the unexpected and followed up their amazing debut with something even better. While not straying from their basic ideas of inspired sampler lunacy laced over unstoppable beats, they've managed to avoid both rut and self-parody. It's all here: the English lounge jazz, embarrassing funk, John Phillip Sousa, endless James Bond references, and so on, tightly woven together with gleeful synth warbles and irresistible bass lines. Here, they up the ante on both wackiness and musicality. The goofy element is laid on so thick that I first suspected the joke would get old very fast. But when punchlines lost their power, I began to notice how solidly built these tunes really are. While lighthearted almost to a fault, this music is not lightheaded. For Your Ears Only relies on tunefulness and airtight grooves to move your butt - the gimmicks are just a wonderful bonus.

Fila Brazillia: Mess. Steve Cobby and Man McSherry have quietly built up a body of work that touches on electronica but really has more in common with 70s funk and English jazz. These three influences collide in Fila Brazillia in what seems to be an endless number of permutations. The results are always detailed and highly polished, and reflect a deep understanding of all their source material. Their sound takes a bit of getting used to (for the synth-head), but the rewards are well worth the patience. So far, Mess is my favorite of the catalogue, but I also recommend Luck Be A Weirdo Tonight without reservation.

Ju Ju Space Jazz: Shloop. Every now and again, something comes along that defies my attempts to describe it. This would be one of those things. Hailing from Australia - home of the weirdest dance music in the world - Ju Ju brings a fresh approach to downtempo electronica that can only be called bizarre. The synth work is freewheeling and innovative. And then they improvise, play trumpet, rap, gleefully borrow from Latin music and swing, and do it all in a style that, like Bentley Rhythm Ace, seems to appear fully formed out of nowhere. It's outrageous, assured, and richly detailed. Just thinking about this disc makes me happy.

Miranda Sex Garden: Carnival of Souls. Six years and numerous personnel changes since their last release, MSG checks back in with a short set that hearkens back to 1992's Suspiria. The thick guitar textures, high clear vocals, and impeccable musicianship are all in place, and the sound is the most stripped down it's been since their a cappella debut. The songs cover the ground from ethereal to raging intensity, but Carnival doesn't really reflect the astonishing ambition and range of '94's Fairytales of Slavery. It's a good disc, but after six years one might have expected a bigger step forward.

Mocean Worker: Mixed Emotional Features. Adam Dorn's 1999 release arrived close on the heels of his terrific debut, Home Movies from the Brainforest. The good news is that it sounds like the other half of a double album. There is no bad news. This is drum and bass that's human, musical, and expertly crafted. It goes from compulsively danceable to poignant to abstract in its fifty-odd minutes, and not a moment fails to be worth hearing. Mocean Worker is easily the best thing to happen to jungle since Amon Tobin.

Patchwork: Diorama. Hamburg's Jens Paulsen has skirted around the German dance music world for several years, crafting elegant music whose warmth and intimacy can only be compared to the Orb. With Diorama, he shifts gears a bit and offers us a set that's about half uptempo. The dance material on this disc will be unlike what you know - it's complex, multi-layered, and develops themes and structures. Still, it is dance music, and as such this is the lightest music Patchwork has released. The other tracks continue Paulsen's series of tone paintings into ever more delicate and specific territory. While a touch uneven, this is a worthy addition to the Patchwork catalogue, and continues to build Paulsen's case as one of the great unsung geniuses of electronic music.

Sounds From the Ground: Terra Firma. What have these guys been doing for the last four years? Kin may be my favorite dub album of all time, created by two guys who apparently have never recorded anything else. But the enigmatic duo of Jones and Woolfson have returned with a disc that tops it in every way. Terra Firma is crammed full of the seductive textures and hypnotic rhythms that got me interested in electronic music in the first place. These pieces unfold with unhurried grace, adding layer after layer of shimmering sounds on top of bass you could build a house on. There are some surprises, such as beats which turn out to be much more complex than you heard the first time through, but the surprises are few. What this disc is all about is simple ideas realized in their purest form. Dazzling.

Amon Tobin: Supermodified. Tobin's third album is his slowest and most subtle yet. While there are definite nods to the drum and bass way of thinking, Tobin's music has left the dancefloor entirely behind this time. While jungle remains his compositional springboard, Supermodified bears very little relation to dance music. His sample/beat collages are full of precise hues and odd juxtapositions, and demand careful listening. This isn't a huge step forward, but a must for Tobin fans. For those just starting out with him, I suggest Permutation as a better starting place.

Ultramarine: United Kingdoms. Ultramarine's third album (from 1993) remains ahead of its time. This collection of electronic instrumentals is probably the most cheerful and infectious of their career, but the light touch in no way interferes with the restless intelligence of everything these guys do. Their incorporation of folk and jazz elements, their musicianship, their quirky arrangements, and their wildly original 303 programming would make this a standout if it had been released last week. The only missteps are two vocal performances by Robert Wyatt, but I think it's to Cooper and Hammond's credit that they're willing to take chances (and learn from their mistakes). They would follow this up in 1995 with Bel Air, which you should buy RIGHT NOW.

XTC: Wasp Star. Subtitled "Apple Venus Volume 2," the new XTC couldn't be further removed from last year's ambitious orchestral offering. Wasp Star is a collection of rock songs, played on electric guitars. And where Apple Venus was crafted with meticulous detail, this album is unaffected and spontaneous. However, under the "aw shucks we just did it in a weekend" veneer lurks the work of a master songwriter. "Playground" and "We're All Light" rank with Partridge's best songs to date, and there's nothing here a lesser band wouldn't be proud to call their best work.

Dakini Records: Sky Dancing. Dakini Records is the work of Gio Makyo, a brilliant electronic musician creating dub from within the form of Indian classical music. His label, Dakini, features a number of like-minded artists. And with the exception of one track, Sky Dancing is a promise of great things to come. From Makyo's quick and light "tantrika" to a soundscape of remarkable depth by Jaia, this disc represents all that is good about "East Meets West" experiments.

Banco de Gaia: Igizeh. Banco de Gaia is best known in ambient circles for the 1994 classic, Last Train to Lhasa. This disc is an enduring masterpiece, and set a very high bar for Toby Marks' subsequent efforts. And after two very slipshod releases, I'd about given up hope on him. Then he went and did this. Igizeh is the album I've been waiting for - a worthy followup to Last Train. Marks is once again in top compositional form, creating music with statement and development, tension and resolution, angular motifs and thick textures. Found elements, live performers, and synthesizers are arranged in elegant balance, creating the sound of a true global culture where Western high tech is completely at home with West African drumming and Muslim prayer calls. The terms 'epic' and 'sprawling' come to mind, but this isn't a set of spacey synth noodling - the tracks are expansive, but never lose focus. The only glitch is a vocal version of "Glove Puppet" - a weak track in its instrumental original form, and quite regrettable here. But elsewhere on the disc, Marks works the musical spectrum from anthemic to ethereal without a false step. This is a strong, strong piece of work, and very highly recommended.

Spirit Zone Records: Global Psychedelic Chillout, Volume 1 Spirit Zone is a Goa label based in Hamburg, Germany. Since 1996, their Global Psychedelic Trance series has featured a dance disc and an ambient disc. While the dance discs have been a bit uneven through the years, the downtempo material has been consistently brilliant. And now they've started a new series that simply drops the dance music altogether. It's excellent news. GPC1 is simply an outstanding two-disc set, featuring music in a variety of styles and moods. Standouts include tracks by Pyxis, Ju Ju Space Jazz, Shiva Chandra, and Ololiuqui. My only complaint is that the three weakest tracks on the whole set are clustered at the beginning of the first disc. It creates a bad impression of a great compilation from a great label, but the rest of the material more than redeems itself. This is a bargain by any standards, and any ambient lover will find something of great value here.

Mouse on Mars: Niun Niggung. More friendly, clever, and somewhat shy music from Andi Toma and Jan St. Werner. If you're familiar with the Mouse, you know that their approach is to create radically new timbres and rhythmic ideas, and then understate them to the point where they're difficult to even notice. That's what they're up to here, and even if anyone else was doing it, nobody would do it better. This time they've added some horns and a bit of Latin flair. But nothing too flashy, of course. Brainy, cheerful, and infectious.

DJ Swingsett: Sights Unseen. Pleasant set of downtempo noodling that I picked up because it had an appealing surface. Subsequent listens have revealed that it's surface all the way down, but it remains appealing. Kind of house, kind of trip-hop, a few judicious vocals. Goes down like sorbet.

Squarepusher: Selection Sixteen. It's Squarepusher. It's intense. It's weird. This disc isn't really breaking new ground, but it's to Tom Jenkinson's credit that the ideas he introduced early on can stand a great deal of elaboration. If you like Squarepusher, grab this immediately - he's in top form. If you don't know Squarepusher, be prepared for drum and bass that swings from jazzy improvisation to relentless acrobatics with lightning changes of tempo and meter. There are single seconds of this man's music that sound like they took weeks to do - the level of detail is just maniacal. Rewarding, but not especially user-friendly: you are expected to keep up.

Mocean Worker: Home Movies from the Brainforest. Too much jungle suffers from overbearing mechanization. While making music with software has opened up new frontiers of sound, it has also allowed people to churn out soulless beats with no personal vision: organized sound with no music in it. Enter Adam Dorn (Mocean Worker). He joins the small group of drum and bass producers who, like Amon Tobin and Mike Paradinas, infuse their technical prowess with deep musicality and human warmth. Dorn's music is dynamic, making use of a wide variety of tempos and arrangements. His emotional palette is equally diverse, surprising the listener by using the skittering rhythms of jungle to propel delicate statements of longing and sweetness. Outstanding.

Scala: Compass Heart. Once Justin Fletcher parted ways from Seefeel, the remaining members moved toward the more familiar format of the song. Guitars, voices, and drums all find their own voices here, liberated from the unified wall of sound that was Seefeel. The results are quirky, interesting, and often gorgeous. While the sound is harder, this isn't rock. While there is singing, these aren't quite songs. This is instead more of a presentation of ideas, of musical possibilities: it is experimental in the best sense of the word. Far from being a pointless exercise in novelty, Scala gets a lot of mileage from setting up tunes based on pop conventions, and then turning them inside out. Fans of Curve, Portishead, and Dead Can Dance all take notice. Scala doesn't really sound anything like any of those bands, but they do all share at least the same skewed vision of collaboration-as-laboratory, and a deep commitment to texture.

Makyo: Sringara. Flawless Indian dub. Each track on this disc is masterfully constructed with very classical ideas. Motifs are introduced, varied, developed, and employed in structures that move toward genuine conclusions. Heavy bass and light synth work are mixed with traditional Indian instrumentation and singing in ways that feel completely natural. As a whole 'Sringara' is so dreamy and delightful that it's easy to miss how precisely these compositions are assembled. A beautiful set that rewards several levels of attention.

Phantasm Records: Surrender to the Vibe 2. Another ambient record from a trance label that avoids the cliches of 'downtempo Goa.' Some of this disc is beautiful, some of it is challenging, some of it is flat-out experimental. A wide variety of approaches are included, but the track selection is impeccable throughout. This would be at home in any serious ambient collection - one needn't even know that Nervasystem and Shakta normally make pure dance music.

Black Dog: Bytes and Spanners. Working my way backward from Plaid, I found a treasure trove of older ambient. Like the newer material, the Black Dog was all about attacking a huge range of styles and bending them to their own ends. And, like the newer material, it's all amazingly good. While electronic music is probably the one area where you never hear hipsters whining that 'their old stuff was better,' Black Dog's early efforts (like those of the Orb) are holding up quite well, thank you.

Underworld: Second Toughest in the Infants. OK, so these guys have been around forever. Where was I? I just discovered this 1996 release, and what a revelation it is. I think I can tell you how I missed the bus: Underworld stubbornly refuses to make either dance music or pop songs, hewing to a middle ground of their own creation. So sprawling 10-minute works like 'Juanita' frustrate both the dancefloor and anyone who's just waiting for the chorus. But listen to it on its own terms, and suddenly you're hearing something new. And something really, really good. Dark and subtle, beat-driven in places, then taking a right angle into a beautifully executed verse. And it does all fit together. I feel like a moron - I could have been listening to this for the last four years. Even better news: 1994's 'Dubnobasswithmyheadman' is just as good.

NIN: The Fragile. Trent, Trent... It's been five years since The Downward Spiral. I'm over it - shouldn't you be over it? A big sludgy mess of teen angst held over way too long. There are a couple of tracks on disc two, but nothing that redeems the whole. A pity - Reznor has demonstrated time and again that he has talent to burn, and his recent acquisition of Warp Records shows that he's interested in more sophisticated kinds of music. But maybe it just doesn't pay the bills.

Rob Zombie: American Made Music to Strip By. More White Zombie remixes by Charlie Clouser (NIN), Lords of Acid, Meat Beat Manifesto, etc. It touches my Inner Beavis. So sue me.

Plaid: Rest Proof Clockwork. Tough disc to review. Plaid (two members of the legendary Black Dog) is making a sort of meta-electronica. Their music draws on everything that's happened in electronic music over the last decade, and runs it through a wholly unique set of perspectives. Rest Proof Clockwork is at once eclectic almost to the point of multiple personality disorder, and a coherent, unified whole. Mannered, artful, and incredibly confident. Very highly recommended.

Warp Records: 10+3. A 2-disc set featuring all of your Warp heroes remixing one another. Essential for any fan of Aphex Twin, LFO, Squarepusher, Boards of Canada, Plaid, Nightmares on Wax, Autechre, and so on. This collection covers a vast range of styles, and it's a sure bet that no matter who you like on Warp, there are a few tracks here that will make you think you got a bargain even at the import price.

Total Eclipse: Access Denied. Interesting set of downtempo tracks in various styles from French Goa duo. It's pleasant and well-realized throughout, but uncompelling overall.

Starseeds: Parallel Life. Sensual electronics with some sultry vocals and a bit of Fender Rhodes. Unapologetically erotic and psychedelic. It won't knock your socks off with its brilliance, but it does what it does so well.

Autechre: EP7. The mature realization of the new direction Autechre took with LP5. The music is now less beat-driven, makes deeper use of explicitly non-musical sound, and is entirely unconcerned with accessibility. And with pieces like 'dropp' and 'pir,' they realize heights of specificity and austerity no one else working in electronic music has even imagined. The music continues to speak to extremely rarified feelings of joy and despair, and is at times wrenching. The set peaks with 'maphive 6.1' which can be read as a summation of everything Brown and Booth have mastered over the last eight years. This work is pure, singleminded, and firmly establishes electronic music as a high art form.

To Roccoco Rot: Amateur View. A laid-back set of electronic atmospheres. A bit aimless at times, but full of lovely vintage sounds. This is calm music whose reach never exceeds its grasp.

Mu-Ziq: Royal Astronomy. Good lord - what happened here? Mike Paradinas made a huge mark with 'Lunatic Harness.' I have no idea what he's up to here, but I was unable to listen to it more than twice. Just horrible. Trust me on this one.

Barramundi 1 & 2. These two compilations from the Antler-Subway label focus on digital textures and cool soundscapes. While both discs veer into cliche in places, there are enough strong tracks on both to make them worth having.

Urchin: Urchin. I don't know a great deal about trip-hop, but I know I like this. Loping beats slurred with fuzzy electronic textures, slink bass lines, and spare collage work. Good start to finish.

Banco de Gaia: The Magical Sounds of Banco de Gaia. Film music for a global party travelogue. Toby Marks seems to have given up on breaking new ground (as he did so brilliantly on 'Last Train to Lhasa'), but his current efforts are appealing and extremely competent. Banco de Gaia makes positive dancey music that draws on a huge array of indigenous music from all over the planet. He is part of a small cadre of musicians who really know how to work with samples of other peoples' music. His source material is never gloss or gimmick - he works around it with delicacy and respect, and the results are always worth hearing.

Autechre: Peel Session. Three tracks from Autechre's tri repetae period. If you know Autechre, this is essential. If you don't, this might not be a bad place to start. Beat-driven, arid, and using subtle hues from a restrained emotional palette. Either this speaks to you or it doesn't, but you can't deny its relentless intelligence.

Orbital: Middle of Nowhere. Eight new tracks from the Hartnoll brothers - yay! This disc is less restrained and complex than 'In Sides,' but it's chock full of tuneful Orbital goodness. They remain the only people working in electronic music who are interested in tonal harmony and song structure, and their pop instincts are sharper than ever. These songs are immediately accessible, deceptively complex, and entirely danceable - the effort of master craftsmen.

Squarepusher: Big Loada. Tom Jenkinson is obviously from another planet. Jungle's answer to Aphex Twin offers up a selection of twisted tracks that are sometimes beautiful, sometimes harsh, and consistently brilliant. This would be a good place to start with Squarepusher. If his frenetic, improvisational, and unpredictable style turns you on, check out 'Hard Normal Daddy' and 'Feed Me Weird Things.'

Cibo Matto: Stereo*Type A. Well, they've gone and done it. One might have written off 'Viva La Woman' as a one-shot joke, but Yuka Honda and Miho Hatori are back to show us they meant business. With Sean Lennon and Timo Ellis on board for their sophomore release, they pick up pieces of jazz, metal, hip-hop, the Andrew Sisters, funk, big band music, Wendy Carlos, beat poetry, and God knows what else, smash them together and record what falls out. To describe a track like 'Sci-fi Wasabe' would be to make it sound like a Dr Demento joke. What words can't capture is the incredible assurance and validity of Cibo Matto's insane hybrid tunes. Oh yeah - it's also lots of fun.

XTC: Apple Venus. It's time to stop comparing Andy Partridge to Lennon and McCartney. He is their equal, if not their better. Pop music elevated to the level of fine art has been XTC's project for nearly 20 years, and the songs 'Apple Venus' demonstrate the Partridge has a seemingly bottomless well of talent.

Matmos: Matmos. The use of samplers has totally transformed modern music, but while some people have experimented very heavily with found sound, the ideas of musique concrete have remained largely unexplored since the mid-60s. Enter Matmos. These are two guys who are very serious about the aims of people like Stockhausen and Cage: two guys who truly believe that all sound is music. The tracks on 'Matmos' are assembled from tiny snippets of everyday noise: speech, shoes, pieces of latex, etc. Their techniques have of course been liberated by the sampler, which makes it possible to do in a day what would have taken a month with tape, and their style has been influenced by modern dance music. But this music remains severe and original throughout. Not all of their experiments are successful, but when they make an idea work, all you can feel is amazement.

Autechre: LP5. After the wrenching Chiastic Slide, which represented the pinnacle of the techniques they've been developing for the last five years, Autechre takes an unexpected step toward accessibility. The tracks on LP5 have a quicker, lighter touch than we've come to expect, and many of them come as a breath of fresh air. Make no mistake: this sounds like Autechre. All the arid textures, shaped noise, and skewed complex rhythms are present. But they are being used to explore a new emotional landscape. Not all of the new experiments are entirely successful. Several tracks wander into vagueness, and a couple others lack the depth we've come to expect. Still, LP5 is an engaging set of material with several standouts, and we can confidently look forward to them developing a new direction.

Eclipse: Twisted Records. A collection of ambient dub from Simon Posford and friends. Posford, who made his reputation as the most inventive practitioner of Goa trance, has begun to turn his attention to slower, more complex music. He's following a pattern established by the ambient artists of the early 90's, who left House and the rave scene to create a new form of music. As Goa producers start slowing down and becoming more interested as music as an end in itself, we should see another revolution in electronica, and this disc is a taste of things to come. I called this "ambient dub" earlier, but rest assured that this doesn't sound like the Orb. Goa relies on counterpoint, intricate layering, very deep synth work, and extremely simple rhythms, all of which are reflected here. The bass lines will be familiar, but the rest of the mix will be new territory to most of you (one hopes that in time these people will find new rhythmic structures to hang their tapestries on, but for now, it's dub). The standout track is Posford and Ram's "And the Day Turned to Night," a 20-minute excursion into a alien sonic landscape which alone is worth the price of admission. Keep an eye on this Posford guy - he's going places.

Robert Fripp: Gates of Paradise. More improvisational reflections on Fripp's religious crises. The four pieces here are divided into two pairs, "The Outer Darkness" and "The Gates of Paradise." The former are anxious, despairing, and nearly unlistenable. The latter are tone paintings of a version of heaven. Fripp stays true to his idiosyncratic mission. Whether you can keep up or not is not his problem. Like much of his solo output, "Gates of Paradise" is both challenging and rewarding, though most certainly not a casual listen.

Boards of Canada: Music has the Right to Children. One hell of a debut. Combining the rhythmic developments of 90s ambient with the colors and textures of the 70s, this Scottish outfit comes up with something that leaves me amazed every time I hear it. If you can imagine Eno's "Music for Films" made today, and in collaboration with Ultramarine an Autechre, you're getting close to what's been accomplished here. Much like the Pixies, Boards of Canada have not so much made something new as they have taken a set of obvious influences and so thoroughly fused them that you're never really sure what the sound reminds you of. The contrast between the diversity of source material and consistency of voice makes every minute of "Music" uniquely compelling. From soundscapes to spoken-word backdrops to bits that creep right up on hip-hop, every piece of the last three decades that flashes by on this disc serves a common musical imperative. Delightful and highly recommended.

Soul Coughing: El Oso. It would have been highly unrealistic to expect Soul Coughing to keep making records as good as "Ruby Vroom." That their second release avoided the sophomore slump was a real surprise. So it might be unfair to peg "El Oso" as a bad album. But it's not really all that great, either. The newfound radio-friendliness has smoothed out many of the quirks and rough edges that made them endearing, and several of the songs (the hit "Circles", for instance) don't even sound like any effort was put into them. When the songs work ("Misinformed", "Houston") it only serves to point out how weak the rest of the disc is.

Sounds From The Ground: Kin. A perfect set of restrained dubby ambient from the impeccable Waveform label. Unexpected turns of bass and judicious use of the human voice make this one of the sexiest things I've ever heard. Yummy.

Plaid: Not for Threes. Former Black Dog members turn in a set of unpredictable songs and instrumentals. Skewed pop, slo-mo drum and bass, and jazzy flourishes stand side by side on the quirky and likeable disc. There are a number of guest vocalists (including Bjork), and the instrumental stand-ins are all over the map. I can't really say this is breakthrough material, and there are no real standout tracks, but the whole thing is executed with a deftness that speaks of long practice. Engaging, if not compelling.

Amon Tobin: Bricolage. Drum and bass, all grown up. Both slower and more complex than its two-stepping dancefloor cousin, Tobin's music has one foot planted in futuristic abstraction, and one foot tapping out the crazy rhythms of Esquivel. He makes extensive and creative use of samples, and if you think you've heard sample-heavy jungle, think again. Instead of dropping a few bars of an old Blue Note record on top of a lifeless jackhammer rhythm, Tobin takes long excerpts of everything from big band to old movies, and weaves his sound through them in a seamless palimpsest. His work is so restrained and subtle that you're never sure where the sample ends and his music begins. And when he leaves this technique to the side (as he does in the disc's closing tracks) the music becomes stark, alien, and engrossing.

Blue Room Released Records: More Signs of Life. This compilation of mostly Dutch and German tracks from one of England's oldest trance labels is simply one of the best ambient collections I've ever heard. Most of the tracks are spare, restrained, and elegant. The rhythmic notions are for the most part taken from Goa and jungle, but this isn't yet another 'downtempo trance album.' The music here is serious and at times quite surprising.

Talvin Singh: OK. Singh's love of film music makes 'OK' run out of momentum in places, but the moments when it all comes together completely redeem it. Producer/composer/drummer Singh assembles a cast of Indian and Pakistani musicians and turns out some of the most thrilling drum and bass you're likely to hear. Complex rhythms? These tabla madmen will show you complex rhythms.

Patchwork: Odeon. Extremely warm and intimate, with rock-solid grooves that just don't let up. There's nothing of astonishing brilliance here, just a lot of flawless execution.

NFA Khan: Star Rise. Recent works by the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, as interpreted by some of England's finest Desi drum and bass artists. Asian Dub Foundation, Talvin Singh, and others turn in respectful and highly likeable version of songs from "Mustt Mustt" and "Night Song." The original melodies and hypnotic rhythms tend be enhanced by the strenuous sampler and tabla workouts, though there are places where the balance isn't perfect. If you haven't heard the Indian/Pakistani d-n-b that's coming out of the UK these days, this would be a good place to start. If you're disturbed by the idea of Qawalli being polluted with techno, bear in mind that Khan himself was fascinated by modern western music, and created some of the most seamless "east meets west" music ever made. And even before his collaborations with Real World, he revolutionized the Qawalli form with faster beats and more intricate rhythms, with the express intention of getting a younger generation into the music. I think he would have been pleased by this disc, as he never treated music like something that belonged in a museum or a reservation.

Ben Neill: Goldbug. Interesting jazz-inflected drum and bass set from electronic artist and trumpeter Ben Neill. This disc's greatest strength is Neill's use of real instrumentation in an electronic setting. It also doesn't hurt that the man plays a mean trumpet. While not the most groundbreaking thing I've heard all year, Goldbug has a consistent level of skill and tunefulness that sets it apart from most of the d-n-b pack.

Massive Attack: Mezzanine. After wunderkind Tricky left the outfit, lots of people were willing to dismiss this band. Tricky's meteoric rise and a tepid sophomore release from his former bandmates only served to reinforce the opinion that Massive Attack was a thing of the past. Good news: they're back. 'Mezzanine' is a mature and sophisticated effort that confidently brings the trip-hop idiom to new musical territories. Do not expect a rehash of 'Blue Lines.' Massive Attack's range of source material is almost too broad to list, but every style and every sample is applied to a unified, coherent vision. The result is so thoroughly distilled by the band that I'm reminded of both the Pixies and Dead Can Dance - two other bands who wear their influences on their sleeves, but make music only they can make. The sound is both dense and intense: loping beats, rock-solid bass lines, and deeply melodic vocals dominate. This is music with a visceral, physical presence. There is a tendency to brooding, but the disc is rescued from claustrophobia by moments of genuine release and a few passages of surprising delicacy. 'Mezzanine' is both compelling and balanced. Massive Attack is alive and well, and there's bound to be some nasty words comparing this wonderful album to the latest murky and aimless offering from Tricky.

Ultramarine: User's Guide. Another exercise in musical sleight-of-hand from Britain's masters of electronic Caribbean lounge chamber jazz. Confused? Just spin any track on this disc. As usual for Ultramarine, the first listen presents a surface designed to distract you from the actual content of the track. This time around, they want you to believe this is highly polished ambient, and at low volumes the smooth, cool textures of 'User's Guide' make admirable background noise. But you know they're pulling your leg, so turn it up. It quickly becomes obvious that there's a lot going on here. What seemed spare reveals itself to be densely layered. Phrases and beats will vanish, only to reappear later as subliminal counterpoint. In fact, some tracks sound like they have other entire tracks playing beneath them at low volume. But Ultramarine never adds for the sake of bulk. Balance, poise, and a judicious use of silence distinguish every track of 'User's Guide,' and there is not a single gratuitous gesture on the whole disc. This music doesn't demand your attention, yet rewards it at any level. The arrangements manage to be complex, rich, and accessible all at once. And always impeccably tasteful, always irremediably British. 'User's Guide' is missing the flashes of genius that make their 'Bel Air' a classic, but the sustained grace and intelligence make this an essential listen.

Autechre: Chiastic Slide. It is no longer fair to bring up Aphex Twin or Higher Intelligence Agency when discussing Autechre. They have mutated into something wholly unique. Unique, and brilliant. Their sound has centrifuged down to two palettes: dry synthetic synth textures, and organized masses of found sound. The two types of sound weave a pattern that is deeply mechanical, yet full of emotional depth. They manage to wring poignancy from what for the life of me sounds like metal fatigue. Were that not enough, Autechre pulls off a few amazing feats of arrangement. There is a track that shifts from 4/4 to 6/8 without revealing how it gets there and a melody that runs for five minutes without resolving (which makes the entire track feel like a massive, precariously balanced boulder). The sounds are tortured and unmusical, but the pieces are so elegantly put together that it takes a minute to notice. Each track is an exercise in bringing music out of noise, order out of chaos. And yet these aren't self-indulgent intellectual games; the results are affecting, even riveting. These may well be love songs to machines, by machines. But they are still love songs.

Seefeel: Quique. Here's something you don't hear every day: electronic ambient music without the electronics. Seefeel takes the new ambient form and translates it to the guitar-drone idiom of My Bloody Valentine. Add a little flute and voice with a dash of dubby bass, and you come up with a gorgeous, overpoweringly psychedelic wall of sound. Each track quickly builds up a basic structure. Once a plateau is reached, the band just churns away. The music is static in terms of tension and resolution, but the use of deep layers of delay creates a surface of sound that picks up tiny variations from each instrument and spreads them like wind on water. Bliss.

A Positive Life: Synaesthetic. Buoyant, bubbly ambient dub from England's Waveform label. This isn't a breakthrough effort - just deftly executed electronic music. There is a sense of fun on this disc that is quite refreshing. Consistently enjoyable without a single lapse in tone or execution. It's not the sort of thing you rave to your friends about, but I've been surprised at how often it turns up in my CD deck.

Projeckt Two: Space Groove. One half of the new King Crimson (Fripp, Belew, and Trey Gunn) locked themselves in a studio for three days of improvisation. No rehearsal, no overdubs. 'Space Groove' is a two disc set of highlights from this adventure. First surprise: Adrian Belew is a really good drummer. Who knew? Disc one is probably the closest thing to jazz Fripp has ever recorded (still, no one's going to mistake him for Django Reinhart). Disc two is a bit more expansive, with Fripp and Gunn concentrating on creating textures instead of trading riffs. I thoroughly enjoyed 'Space Groove,' but I hesitate to recommend it to a non-fan. It is deeply impressive that musicians can be disciplined enough to create meaning from spontaneous gestures, and I think any serious music fan can appreciate what's been accomplished here. But Fripp's musical vocabulary is an acquired taste, and neither the jazz enthusiast nor the jam-band deadhead are going to feel immediately at home with these wide intervalic leaps and oblique turns of phrase. But if Fripp and company have ever Touched Your Monkey you owe it to yourself to hear these discs.

Lunatic Calm: Metropol. My first instinct was to dismiss Lunatic Calm as the Big Beat Flavor of the Week. But once I started listening beyond the obvious Alternative Hit Singles, I realized this is a band with more on its mind than being the next Chemical Brothers. Yes, there are a few songs with a definite pop appeal. And there's nothing wrong with that. But contrast them with the ten-minute 'Meltdown' or the seven-minute 'The Sound.' This is music about muscle and attitude, but it's also music with some brains. Lunatic Calm isn't content to thrash out a riff for three and half minutes. They want to get inside the riff, and explore it from as many angles as they can. Expect mutating textures and beats that turn themselves inside out. If techno with punky edges and dope beats sounds like your cup of tea, give this a shot. It's considerably better than it has to be.

Plug: Drum and Bass for Papa. Fun-loving jungle in a continuous mix. Luke Viebert brings nothing new to the genre, but he avoids the tedious cliches and numbing repetition that plague so much of drum and bass. This is easygoing music that almost swings in places, and remains within the realm of the danceable.

Glenn Branca: Symphony #9. In between the two most apocalyptic pieces of music ever written (Symphonies 8 and 10, 'The Mysteries'), Branca wrote 'L'eve Future.' It's a difficult piece to pin down. Where so much of Branca's output is brutal and tormented, the Ninth is delicate and otherworldly. Branca is still exploring his world of harmonics and just intonation, but here he does it with a gentle touch. It seems as if, after writing 'Devil Choirs at the Gates of Heaven' (Symphony #6), he decided to give the choirs of heaven a voice as well. This piece is surprising within the context of Branca's recent work, but it stands on its own. Austere, restrained, and oddly beautiful.

Curve: Come Clean. You probably shouldn't read this review. You see, I'm a fan. A rabid, drooling, nutcase fan. Still with me? Good. GO BUY THIS NOW! NOW, I TELL YOU! When the single for 'Chinese Burn' was released, I was disappointed to find Flood's name in the credits, as I lay the blame for the lackluster 'Cuckoo' squarely at his Top 40 feet. However, when the album was released, Flood's mix had been dropped in favor of Steve Osbourne's, and Osbourne was producing with Alan Moulder at the mixing desk. Hooray! For those of you just joining us, it was the Curve/Osbourne/Moulder team that brought us the early EPs, which many feel to be the band's best work. And I'd have to say the magic is back. 'Come Clean' is not only a better album than 'Cuckoo,' it's stronger than 'Doppleganger.' But don't expect Curve to relive past glories. It's been seven years since 'Frozen,' and Curve is a different band. The sound is as dense and richly textured as ever, but it is employed in a number of new ways. The old Curve had two settings: 'Stun' and 'Seduce.' On 'Come Clean,' Garcia and Halliday show us a much wider range of possibilities. They are at turns wry, witty, and poignant. And the old tornado-of-sound is still ready to rip the shingles off your brane. If you liked Curve, you want this. If you don't know anything about them, about all I can say is that they are the true Band of the Nineties. They have wedded guitars and electronics in a way that gives neither sound center stage. Their lush distorted textures and throbbing electronic beats avoid the cliches of dance music, industrial, and the shoegazing tendencies of bands like My Bloody Valentine and Stereolab. They have made an edgy, completely modern psychedelic idiom that exists separately from the ambient explosion of the early '90s. They have an energy which isn't aggressive or sexual, but deeply powerful nonetheless. They're probably my favorite band, or at least the only band I still care about that plays guitars.

Spacetime Continuum: Emit Ecaps. A collection of ten brilliant compositions from Jonah Sharp. Sharp has learned to make speakers do tricks I've never heard before, and it's tempting to say these pieces aren't music as much as they are dynamic sonic environments. But that not only sounds ridiculously pretentious, it also ignores the fact that Sharp's music is guided by complex structural imperatives. These are compositions in the proper sense of the word, and make use of the traditional notions of exposition, development, and resolution. It should come as little surprise, however, that Sharp's tools are not melodic motifs and harmonic relationships, but rather patterns of timbral morphing and a careful control over the balances between two or three layers of sound. And oh, the sounds... Sharp pays as much attention to his building blocks as his finished structures, and for 'Emit Ecaps' he has built an entire palette of glassy and precise textures. Austere, tranquil, and full of graceful intelligence, this disc offers great rewards in every detail. About the only thing I can compare it to in terms of compositional style and timbral control is HIA's 'Freefloater,' But unlike that work, 'Emit Ecaps' evokes remote and open spaces and a sense of cool detachment. The entire set is subtle, but in places it is quite simply sublime. Very highly recommended.

Ultramarine: Bel Air. This has been a tough album to review, for two reasons. First, 'Bel Air' is completely unlike any other ambient electronic music I've ever heard; and second, because it is even unlike itself on successive listens. So I'll simply say up front that you need this, and then try to tell you what it's like. Your first impression will be that this is sort of an electronic take on the stupidest musical trend of 1996 - lounge music. But that's just the vibraphones - it's tough to hear vibraphones and not think 'fern bar,' but it's immediately obvious that's not where this is headed. OK, so it's a latin-esque take on ambient, with vibes and the occasional trumpet adding a jazzy color to sound paintings of warm rain and parrots. But no, you're wrong again. Because while you think you're hearing sounds very close to those of Latin dance music, a little more attention reveals that aside from the vibes, trumpet, and voices, every sound on this disc is coming out of a synthesizer. And I don't mean cheesy DX-7 approximations of real instruments: I mean this album is built on blatantly, unapologetically artificial sounds. And they're handled so deftly you think you're hearing something else. Then you notice the next thing. These guys aren't using sequencers. They are, of course, for drum and bass parts, but all the leads are being played. And played by very skilled keyboardists. It makes a difference. All the difference in the world. And finally, there's the music itself. What seems cool and relaxed slowly reveals itself to be complex, intricate, downright intellectual. It's not uncommon to hear three, four, even five distinct and independent parts, weaving around one another to create a seamless whole. 'Bel Air' is an amazingly intelligent suite of pieces that hides its accomplishments under several layers of sensual misdirection. It's, um...really something. Highly recommended.

Bentley Rhythm Ace: Bentley Rhythm Ace. Imagine Beck without the mean streak. No, imagine the soundtrack to "Austin Powers" if it had been a good movie. No, imagine FSOL with a sense of humor. I'll admit it's a stretch, but BRA is up to the same sort of sampler hijinx. Except completely different. While both bands are extremely catholic in their range of source material, and manage to make coherent and distinctive collages from it, that's about all they have in common. FSOL is a pair of Serious Unsmiling Artists. BRA, while no less skilled, is a pair of big sillyheads. Every track on this disc is gentle, sunny, and endlessly whimsical. I've been listening to it for three months and I still laugh out loud in places. I would hazard a guess that these two have plundered their parents' record collections, given the weird mid-60s James-Bond-on-laughing-gas feel of the effort. But their music doesn't mock the unbearably schmaltzy pop culture of the period - it works with it. The results are groovy, baby. But don't let the fun get in the way of appreciating the rather daunting technical achievements. BRA has welded together bits of lounge jazz, TV variety shows, movie soundtracks, and who knows what else with a deft and restrained hand. It's obvious upon reflection that most of what you're hearing is their own music, but it's such a perfect setting for their found material that a casual listen won't tell you which is which. It's like the whole springs fully-formed from some wacky Gerry and Sylvia Anderson alternate universe. This is the best debut I've heard since Soul Coughing's 'Ruby Vroom.'.

Mouse on Mars: Autoitacker. The best word to describe Mouse On Mars would be 'shy.' This music is busy and interesting, but if you don't want to pay attention, it will mind its own business. There are no big beats, no screaming leads, no pounding bass. Instead, Mouse On Mars concentrates on intricate rhythms, delicate melodies, and tight ensemble work. These are rare enough in electronic music, but the Mouse tops it off with something truly unique: a warm, rich, organic tone wholly devoid of sharp edges. The timbres almost feel like heartbeats and breathing. And this sort of 'internality' extends to the music as a whole. It gives the impression of thinking to itself. Themes are developed on daydream tangents, with little concern for structure or resolution. 'Autoitacker' isn't aimless. But, like the best ambient music, it doesn't go places because it's already where it wants to be.

Squarepusher: Hard Normal Daddy. Very sophisticated drum and bass. This disc covers a lot of stylistic ground, and avoids the cliches of the genre throughout. My only gripe would be that, as a whole, 'Hard Normal Daddy' doesn't quite gel. Tom Jenkinson has a million great ideas, but they add up to a pretty heterogeneous collection. However, from jazzy numbers with bass guitar improvisations to breakneck synthetic polyrhythms, Jenkinson realizes the true potential of the jungle idiom. Jungle has often been touted as 'the future sound of jazz,' but this usually means that the band in question has simply filled in the holes with lots of jazz samples. 'Hard Normal Daddy,' on the other hand, with its live feel, improvisation, and extension of intricate jungle rhythms to non-percussive instruments, is taking this idea seriously. Challenging and rewarding.

Crystal Method: Vegas. I saw the Crystal Method play for a fashion show. The combination was perfect. Bright! Sexy! Vapid! This is entirely competent booty-shaking music, but you won't remember it five minutes after it's stopped. There are exceptions, like the sly 'Cherry Twist' and the final track, but as a whole 'Vegas' is about as substantial as the semi-transparent blouses I saw being paraded down the catwalk. Useful? No. Appealing? Well...yeah.

U. Srinivas and Michael Brook: Dream. Canadian experimental guitarist Michael Brook, best known for his work with the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, releases a set with Indian mandolin virtuoso U. Srinivas. This is more of a Brook effort than a true collaboration. Brook and some of the Real World clique sat in with Srinivas and company for two nights of extended jam sessions while the latter was recording a stellar set of Indian Carnatic classical music (Rama Sreerama, also available on Real World). Brook took the recordings into the studio for an extended slice-and-dice workout, and added many layers of overdubs. The results are quite satisfying and consistent, if not as electric as his work with NFA Khan. Srinivas' mandolin technique is sinuous, agile, and very precise, and Brook's arrangements leave him well in the foreground. The four extended pieces of 'Dream' are very rich and sensual, and rotate through a number of moods and tones. While Brook's concerns are directed towards ambient music in the tradition of Eno, he has a tremendous sensitivity to Desi idioms, and truly works with them, as opposed to merely stealing sounds and ideas. While a compositional collaboration might have been more interesting, Brook is an excellent musician and composer in his own right, and this is a welcome addition to what I hope will be a growing body of serious East-meets-West projects.

Spiritualized: Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space. The alternative press has been falling over itself in efforts to out-gush one another about this album. Allow me to add a reserved addition to the mountain of praise this disc has generated. This is a good, possibly even great, piece of work. It is not daring, profound, or even especially original. This isn't criticism, but the point seems to have escaped a lot of reviewers. What "Ladies and Gentlemen" offers is craft and sincerity. Rather than a bold step forward, it is a very careful and studious look back. Spaceman (late of Spaceman 3) has done a great deal of homework on all things psychedelic, and has seamlessly fused the skewed perspectives of Syd Barrett, Loop, and Stereolab, among others. But a mere list of influences doesn't do justice to what Spaceman has made from this material. Which is an album of coherent and heartfelt music. He may have picked up the sounds from a half-dozen different sources, but the songs, the sentiment are all his. The results are large-band arrangements that alternately swing, soothe, and break down into extended dissociated jams, and love songs that are sweet without being naive. I have yet to start this disc without letting it run through to the end; it has the kind of warmth and presence that's all you can ask for on an autumn evening.

Bjork: Homogenic. With 'Post,' Bjork handily beat the sophomore jinx. With 'Homogenic,' she's created a masterpiece, and established herself as a major talent. Confident and idiosyncratic, 'Homogenic' is her furthest departure from pop convention to date. It is a tightly cohesive set that, while containing great songs, works best as a whole. There is probably single material here ('Joga' in particular), but the real rewards are to be had by listening through beginning to end. Taken as a whole, the album is an exploration of the possibilities contained in the various combinations of three elements: pure electronics, a string ensemble, and Bjork's unique vocal talents. Unlike many pop artists who are beginning to take notice of the electronic world and are borrowing from its sound, Bjork is very much a part of that world. Her relationship with technology is happy and unforced, and her music grows quite naturally around the rhythms and textures of electronica. Her marriage of the 'techno' palette to songwriting is unusually successful, more so because the electronic elements are themselves so innovative. But just as important to the sound of 'Homogenic' are the string ensembles. The Icelandic String Octet performs through fully half the album, with an unnamed orchestra filling in on other tracks. As with the electronics, the warm textures of the strings are neither gloss nor padding - they are essential to the structure of the music. And these two instrumental halves work together beautifully. The obvious contrast between the 'mechanized' and the 'natural' is never drawn - the computers, wood, and wire are driven to a common purpose, complementing one another perfectly. This feat of arrangement alone would make this album worth noting, but it gets better. Because the main strength of this album isn't its interesting musical ideas - it's the music itself. These songs are affecting, precise, and intense. The singing is at once the most passionate and disciplined that Bjork has ever recorded, and combines with the music's other elements to create a long series of beautifully powerful moments. Each song plays a part in a larger pattern, giving the album a structure complete with exposition, tension, and resolution. When the 43 minutes are up, it seems too short. This is simply a great achievement, and one of the year's very best recordings.

Breaking No New Ground: Stereolab, Brian Eno, Primus, System 7. Pick your rut:

• Stereolab's 'Dots and Loops' takes you to a surprise-free space of timeless psychedelic pop. Perfectly listenable, but nothing you haven't heard from them before.
• It pains me to say anything negative about Brian Eno, but his newest foray into ambient doesn't contain a single idea he didn't thoroughly explore 20 years ago. 'The Drop' might be a great introduction to the world of Eno, but this collection of short sound-paintings will make the old guard reach in frustration for their copies of 'Music for Films.'
• The musicianship is amazing, the arrangements deeply weird, and the wit is dry with a twist of watermelon. In short, it's another Primus album. There's nothing seriously wrong with 'The Brown Album,' but its place as fifth-in-a-series makes it sound a little tired. Claypool and company should maybe take a serious stab at making a country album. Or perhaps do a bunch of show tunes. Anything.
• System 7 turns in a fine set with 'The Golden Section.' The first half is a bit motoric, save for a collaboration with Indian wunderkind Talvin Singh. But the last five tracks completely redeem the less interesting material, wrapping up with a lovely piano-based piece. The intelligent rhythms and graceful combination of exotic guitar textures and ambient electronica are all here, but as whole this album sounds like further sessions from last year's brilliant 'To the Power of Seven.' Of these four releases, System 7 runs in place with the most style.

Godflesh: Love and Hate in Dub. Waking from a slumber of slipshod releases, Godflesh offers us a disc that makes me clutch my head like a stunned monkey. You read the title right - Godflesh wants to be a dub band. For those of you who haven't been exposed, Godflesh is perhaps the harshest industrial band on the planet (or at least the hardest that actually uses instruments - the noise collages of Paul Lemos are admittedly even tougher listening). They employ drum machines, a tiny bit of tortured electronics, and a wall of searing guitar noise. With these tools, they build relentless tracks based on slowly shifting tone clusters. It's an extreme approach, but it tends to suffer from sameness; there's only so long a listener can be truly oppressed before he says, 'yeah, yeah - play something I haven't heard.' Obligingly, Godflesh has tried to bring their brand of sonic terror to several new frontiers. The best, in my opinion, is 1993's 'Slavestate,' in which Godflesh decides they're a dance band. I guarantee that its combination of throbbing beats and feral noise can clear any dancefloor in about 30 seconds - a true classic. And now, we have a disc of dub remixes from last year's 'Songs of Love and Hate.' Well, it ain't Bill Laswell. It's harsh, abrasive, noisy, and angry...dub. Everything you love about dub is missing in this music, yet it is undeniably true to the form. Contrary and confounding, I honestly have no idea what to make of this, but I promise you've never heard anything like it.

Portishead: Portishead. Record noise. On every track. Vocals mixed to sound like the AM radio of a passing VW Bug. On every track. Beginning to get the picture? Portishead's sophomore release goes no deeper then the stylistic flourishes that adorned their incredible debut, 'Dummy.' In fact, the gimmicks on 'Portishead' are so irritating that it almost sounds like a parody of that album. While 'Dummy' was stunning, 'Portishead' is merely numbing. A major disappointment.

Banco de Gaia: Big Men Cry. Though thoroughly competent and listenable, the latest from Toby Marks falls short of his prodigious talents. Lush soundscapes with light rhythmic touches are the norm, with exciting moments few and far between. This would be a fine effort from a lesser artist, but I expect much more from the man who recorded 'Last Train to Lhasa.'

Front Line Assembly: The Initial Command. FLA's first post-split album suffers deeply from the absence of Rhys Fulber. Bill Leeb and his new collaborator create long, maundering series of sequences and beats that never really crystallize. The vocals and guitars are missing this time out, and while this isn't necessarily a bad thing, they haven't been replaced with anything on this disc. The results are thin, uninteresting tracks that give the impression of building toward something that never happens. Leeb is a talented man, and I still believe he can make FLA a going concern without Fulber. It just doen't happen on this album.

Lord of Acid: Our Little Secret. The Lords are back with their usual onslaught shock-to-the-brainstem beats, fat dirty sounds, and perversion. No, it doesn't quite match up to the amazing 'Voodoo-U,' but 'Our Little Secret' is destined to be an instant party classic. The first half rages along at a fever pitch that's possibly even better than 'Voodoo,' but after the abysmally stupid 'Pussy,' it never quite gets its momentum back (said track will no doubt be the bane of clubland this fall). But even the weaker LoA tracks present a wall of sound that ups the ante for newcomers like the Chemical Brothers. No, this isn't music about artistic maturity. The Lords know what we like, and serve it up hot and nasty. The territory of sex, sex, LSD, sex, spanking, and sex will be familiar to fans and will likely win many new converts. My only gripes are two dumb tracks (though 'Spank my Booty' continues to grow on me) and tame cover art. These kids are Tipper Gore's worst nightmare come to life - why to try to minimize the damage?

Mu-Ziq: Lunatic Harness. A remarkable effort from Mike Paradinas that explores the alien territory staked out by Aphex Twin earlier this year. Richard James and Paradinas work together in the same studio, and have collaborated on occasion. This makes the question of influence fairly pointless. It's obvious that many ideas have gone back and forth between the two. But while 'Lunatic Harness' makes use of vintage technology, extreme timbral flexibility, and a unique take on the drum n' bass idiom, Paradinas is heading in a very different direction from his more celebrated pal. These pieces are serious, intricate, and abstract. Their beauty lies not in lush sounds and rich textures, but in their highly articulate structure. Every move on this album is dictated by very specific compositional imperatives, some subtle, some profound. This music forces the listener to concentrate - Paradinas is frequently direct, but makes no concessions to accessibility. The music is also very patient, content to let an idea play out its permutations. Themes are introduced and developed with great care, though in a musical language far removed from classical and pop. Delicate melodies float over insanely complex rhythms and bass lines set perpendicular to any conventional supporting role. Yet the disparate elements make a unique contrapuntal sense, coming together in a surprising coherence. You have not heard music like this before. Highly recommended.

Lost In Space, Phase 03. A compilation of ambient drum n' bass that I can recommend without reservation. These tracks are slinky and atmospheric, but they might have too much 'space' in them if you're looking for something to dance to. But if you're looking for quick, airy grooves to roll through a placid space, look no further.

Juno Reactor: Beyond the Infinite. Raging trance from the masters of the genre. Over a rock-steady kickdrum pulse, Juno Reactor spins an exotic tapestry of abstract patterns and ethnic samples. The basic idea is layers of quick sequences or arpeggios that slowly transform in a space clear of percussion, save for the pulse that ties the whole thing to the ground. The form is simple enough to allow a proliferation of mindless trance, but free enough to allow a band like Juno Reactor to realize truly great ideas. Two things set 'Beyond the Infinite' beyond the mundane. The first is a deep sense of musicality; the source material is carefully thought out, and the arrangements have structure and direction - each piece takes you on a journey (unlike a lot of techno that takes you around a very small circle). The second is texture. The guys have mad, fat, analog sounds that are almost tactile, they're so rich. Few things have reached this level in terms of intelligence and pure danceability since Orbital's Brown album.

Juno Reactor: Bible of Dreams. Go back and read the review for "Beyond the Infinite." OK? "Bible of Dreams" is even better. A lot better. Intricate arrangements and a far wider range of expression take this album out of the realm of great dance music, and into the realm of great music, period. Juno Reactor shows a newfound artistic confidence that takes them into new territories without sacrificing a bit of coherence.

DJ Soul Slinger: Don't Believe. Though Jungle (or Drum n' Bass, or whatever you want to call it) has been around for years now, it has yet to mature into an artistically viable form. It's a fertile field with innumerable possibilities, and all the luminaries of electronic music have dabbled with it. But still it remains in the mindless province of the dancefloor, dominated by the uninventive likes of LTJ Bukem and Alex Reese. Jungle still awaits its auteur. The good news is that Carlos Slinger may just be the one. The bad news is, the breakthrough isn't on this album. Slinger, featured prominently on the fine Jungle Sky compilations, is a major talent who is comfortable with a vast array of influences and source material. 'Don't Believe' is his full-length debut, and it displays his talents in a number of modes. He does everything from hard dancefloor beats to ambient grooves, incorporating jazz, ethnic musics, and pure electronica along the way. Unfortunately, all this eclecticism adds up to a lack of coherence; one gets a sense that even though Slinger can work in a lot of different styles, he hasn't completely mastered them. As a result, 'Don't Believe' has more misses than hits. There's a lot of intriguing material here, but as a whole, the album fails to be consistently satisfying. Give him another two years, though, and DJ Soul Slinger might just be King of the Jungle.

System 7: To the Power of Seven. Gorgeous ambient set from M. Giraudy and Steve Hillage. Complex beats and rich textures are the hallmarks of this set, which ranges from dreamy ambient dub to gyrating trance. System 7's signature is a unique fusion of Giraudy's Orb-inflected electronica and Hillage's experimental guitar work. Unlike many so-called experimental guitarists, Hillage doesn't just play long washes of dissociated tone clusters. His use of bright textures and delays is always decisive and purposeful, and blends amazingly well with the band's array of synths and samplers. Much like the Orb that they once orbited, System 7 is making very human music. It's full of space, life, and emotional content; it just happens to be made with computers. These pieces are full of surprising twists and turns, and reveal a genuine compositional sophistication. Finally, whether the music turns you on or not, this disc is beautifully recorded. Electronic music that pays this much attention to acoustic space is rare. An outstanding effort from an underrated band. Highly recommended.

Shinjuku Filth: Junk. If we're permitted to say "post-industrial," it would be an apt description for this collection of soundscapes and loosely structured collages. Noise, shards of guitar, and dense sampling all figure prominently in the mix, but instead of being assembled into a coherent industrial assault, they are used in an almost painterly manner to establish contrasts and sustain tension. These pieces are dark and adventurous, and most of the experimental risks pay off quite well. An intriguing slice of malevolent ambience.

Funkydesertbreaks, 1 & 2, mixed by DJ John Kelley. OK, you just want to turn your brain off and dance. But you've discovered you just can't do this to completely mindless music. No problem. These two excellent discs, mixed in the middle of the desert by John Kelley, provide the mad beats without beating you over the head a thousand times with the same lick. Granted, this isn't especially interesting listening music, but Kelley does provide a structured experience. Beats shift in and out, the cuts feature a decent variety of sonic textures, and (best of all) there's a lot of different tempos. An hour of 120bpm can make you quite numb, and Kelley is careful to wind things up to a fever pitch, and then let them expand for a while. If you don't lose sight of the fact that this was made on the fly for a huge mass of beat-hungry ravers, these discs are outstanding.

Jungle Sky IV: Atmospheric Drum n' Bass from the Land of the Free. I've been on the jungle trail since about the beginning of the year, and so far this is the most consistently satisfying compilation I've come across. This collection of American jungle ranges from the ethnically-flavored to the compulsively danceable to the beautifully ambient, maintaining a high standard of quality throughout. While a purist might object to the mixing of so many subgenres, the wide range of this comp will appeal to those interested in the musical possibilities of the idiom, as opposed to capturing the feel of this or that club scene. With few exceptions, these tracks are crafted with a skill and care that's so often missing on the dance floor. As with all of the Jungle Sky series, Carlos Slinger appears several times in both composing and mixing roles. He also contributes the disc's high point, 'Ali Rocks.' Good stuff.

System 7: Fire + Water. Outstanding two-disc ambient set from former Orb collaborators M. Giraudy and Steve Hillage. Hillage's textural guitar work opens up a variety of new possibilities, and they are confidently explored in the two hours of music offered here. Hillage's playing is precise and ego-free, blending beautifully with the electronic textures and beats of the new ambient. The music is seamless and fluid, all parts playing together as a whole (most attempts at incorporating live instruments into electronic music either turn the electronic part into accompaniment, or the live part into a incongruous special effect). The two discs are different takes on the same set of material, with most tracks appearing on both. 'Fire' is the faster of the two discs, featuring prominent rhythms and dynamic sequences. 'Water' is closer to old-school ambient, creating a more passive sonic environment that still rewards careful attention. This is not a simple instance of remixing, however. The 'Fire' and 'Water' versions of each track have been built up from a few basic ideas, and have truly separate identities - some of the differences are quite surprising. It's not a case of merely taking out the drum tracks to make instant ambient; these are independent sets with very different goals. The fact that they are thematically related adds a level of complexity to the whole that's more than the sum of its parts. This isn't just a great find - it's also a great bargain at a single-CD price.

The End of a Partnership. Everything that rises must diverge. After something like fifteen years of working together, Bill Leeb and Rhys Fulber have claimed 'creative differences' and split. This means the end of Front Line Assembly, Delerium, Synaesthesia, and Noise Unit. Leeb and Fulber were at least six distinct 'bands,' and I really have no idea how many albums they recorded. Their diversity and productivity are legendary. And what I find truly admirable about them is that their finest achievements are the products of one thing: hard work. I won't kid you, the early FLA and Delerium efforts are pretty bad. It's not necessary to list their faults, but it must be said that with each release, things got better and better. And they just kept at it, in the face of tepid critical response and no doubt friends and family who wished they'd occasionally spend a few minutes outside the studio. Until they finally reached a point where they were not only making some of the best electronic music there is, but staking out their own artistic territory. Things really started to get interesting in 1995. At that point, the ideas driving their various projects began to cross-pollinate, and Leeb and Fulber finally developed a unique musical vocabulary that was instantly recognizable in everything from the industrial FLA to the trance-ambient Synaesthesia. Subsequent releases were no longer bound to genre, but rather different aspects of a single musical vision. This long project is at its end, and has been taken to its logical conclusion. In typical form, Leeb and Fulber have released three albums in the last month, and they represent the very best of what the duo had to offer.

• Delerium: Karma. This will be the big hit. Or at least the college radio favorite. 'Karma' is an extension of the same Goth territory explored on 1995's 'Semantic Spaces.' As with that album, there's a lot more going on here than is immediately apparent. Sure, there's enough gloom and chanting to keep the black eyeliner crowd happy, but this two-disc set is crammed with subtle, persuasive beats, lush textures, and those amazing one-note basslines. The sampling work has branched out into more ethnicities, and Sarah McLachlan and Jaqui Hunt (of Single Gun Theory - a wonderful like-minded band) drop by to lend things a variety of personalities. Cool, calm, and sensual, this is a perfectly enjoyable way to spend an hour and a half. Hell, I've had it on repeat all evening.

• Synaesthesia. Ephemeral: The biggest improvement among the various projects is with the trancey Synaesthesia. 'Embody' had its good moments, but was marred by an inconsistent tone and some clumsy sampling. 'Desiridatum' just faded into mush in too many places. But this one gets it all right. Sharp percussion, thick textures, and close attention to dynamics make these six sprawling tracks the ideal ground control for internal excursions. While loosely structured, this music is never disorganized; close attention has paid to assembling pieces that work together. Grooves emerge from diffuse layers of sound and gracefully sink back into the mix, providing movement while not pulling the piece off course. An even 60 minutes of sonic bliss.

• Noise Unit: Drill. Can we say 'post-industrial?' Why not - industrial has evolved from an experimental set of strategies into a stable form, which makes it ripe for incorporation into other musics and feasible as a starting point for pushing in new directions. 'Drill' does the latter, pushing the cold, mechanical, and lighting-quick dance music of 1995's 'Decoder' into ever-edgier realms. Harsher beats and crunchy guitar samples give the tracks an acid-etched feel, and a profusion of fragmented samples of dialogue create an anxious and claustrophic atmosphere. While 'airless' and 'mechanical' are words that describe this music, they don't carry their usually negative meanings. Noise Unit sets out to achieve a gleaming robotic precision, and enjoy complete success. Lean, restless, menacing, and easily my favorite of the three new albums. This mostly Bill Leeb effort (Fulber is credited with programming and mixing only) may indicate what to expect in the years to come.

David Bowie: Earthling. Where does influence end and outright theft begin? A tough question, but one raised repeatedly by Bowie on his latest outing. We know he likes NIN and various forms of techno, and those tastes are reflected on every track of 'Earthling.' Maybe more than reflected. Maybe copied. The songs on 'Earthling' are solid, and bear an unmistakeable Bowie stamp - in fact, no one else could have written these tunes. And that's precisely I'm so suspicious every time a jungle beat or a sequence of distorted guitar samples goes by. David Bowie isn't these things. David Bowie had nothing to do with these things. And despite the electronic manipulations and drum machines, these are still David Bowie songs. They come from him, and not from artistic impulses that have been suggested by, and are entwined with, technology. In the end, the new sounds on 'Earthling' don't represent a step forward for Bowie: they're just window dressing, tacked on in hope of sounding current and relevant. Which is silly - Bowie long ago reached a point where he can ignore trends, and he should realize that. 'Earthling' would be better off without the 'cutting edge' accessories, and Bowie would be better off simply following his muse (or at least Brian Eno).

Helmet: Aftertaste. It certainly sounds like Helmet - big crunchy guitar chords, gravelly bass, dry bone-snap snare. But, but - where are the hooks? The magic of Helmet is that they make ugly noises you can't get out of your head. The problem with 'Aftertaste' is, well, no aftertaste. Unexciting and forgettable. Better luck next time, guys.

Chemical Brothers: Dig Your Own Hole. A bit of a sophomore slump for the ChemBros. The beats are as good as ever, but this time around they dig a little too deeply into the 70's funk and disco sounds that made 'Exit Planet Dust' so fresh. Deep enough to approach kitsch in places. Also disappointing is a tendency to take brilliant grooves and wear them into ruts. Surprises are few and far between. However, 'Setting Sun,' 'Where Do I Begin,' and 'Psychedelic Reel' are outstanding, so if you can find this at a bargain price, think of it as a big single with a lot of B-sides.

Tricky: Pre Millenium Tension. Speaking of wearing grooves into ruts... Tricky's new album contains all the rhythmic intensity and sound-crafting excellence that one might expect. As each track begins, all you can say is 'wow.' The sound is dense, claustrophobic, dark. The beats are complex and compelling. Martina's angelic vocals and Tricky's laconic raps are still dead-on. But once he's established a groove, it goes on. And on. And on, until the next song. Sadly, as impressed as you might be after 20 seconds of any cut on this disc, you've heard all there is to it. And not even 'Christiansands' can sustain listener interest for its full five-minute length. I suspect that this would be great music to do something else to, but simply listening to it is exhausting.

Orb: Orblivion. After a delighful stay on Earth, Alex Patterson & Co. head back into outer space. First word: 'Orblivion' is every bit as good as 'Orbus Terrarum.' Second word: it is also completely different. The Orb still deals in impossibly lush and dense layers of sound, but this time around, things move. Yes, the new tunes are much quicker, but more significantly, they offer thematic development. This might seem like a step backward for Patterson, who crafted something genuinely new with his massive, perfectly balanced, and entirely static compositions of the last two albums. But the Orb hasn't fallen back on chord progressions and simple arch structures. Instead, the music is driven by addition and subtraction of elements, by changes in density and timbre, by recurring dynamic shifts, and figure/ground inversions. It doesn't yield itself to analysis in quite the same way as a Mozart piano sonata, but these pieces have a definite formal structure that includes exposition, development, and resolution. All of which is entirely too intellectual, because the bottom line is groovy. This album is about as much fun as it's possible to ask music to be. It whirrs, bleeps, swivels, bounces, and hops in a hundred amusing and engrossing ways. The sampling is, as usual, completely goofy (though the rants in 'SALT' run a bit long), and the dub bass lines are back in full force. Patterson even responds to the drum 'n bass phenomenon with the wonderful 'Delta MK II.' 'Orblivion' is, to put it mildly, joyous. That a band as sophisticated as the Orb continues to improve is great, but that a band as fiercely intelligent as the Orb remains completely light-hearted is a minor miracle. If you don't like this, something's just wrong with you.

Autechre: Amber. Very ambient set from these electronic minimalists. Autechre's music is built on a foundation of staccato sound patterns that perform both melodic and rhythmic functions. Stretched drum sounds with compressed, sharp-edged bass are a good example of how this technique can work, but Autechre realizes it in a number of different ways. The pieces on this disc are fairly retiring, and I played it through several times as background noise before I really paid a lot of attention to it. The good news is that it stands up to careful attention, never sinking into mindless repetition or 'space music' noodling. The overall 'feel' of the album is is precise and mathematical. The pleasures here are formal, and live in the beauty of structures rather than the bliss of sensation. If you've liked other Autechre, or want to try some ambient with a more arid feel, this is a solid recommendation.

Doubting Thomas: The Infidel. Back in '91, two-thirds of Skinny Puppy found some time to do a side project. The result was Doubting Thomas, and it's a minor revelation. Working without a singer and outside the Puppy millieu, Cevin Key and the late Dwayne Goettel created a restrained and affecting album that holds up quite well, and strongly prefigures Key's work in Download. By holding back on the doom and gloom and concentrating on texture and consistency, Key and Goettel build a not-quite-industrial sound from electronics, bass guitars, and some judicious samples. The tone strives for tension rather than angst, and uses silence to great effect. In fact, the overall delicacy of the music is another surprise; at no point do things wind up to the familiar fever pitch of these guys' day job. A very pure slice of malevolent ambience.

FSOL: ISDN. A collection of live-via-ISDN radio performances that prefigure FSOL's work on 'Dead Cities.' The music shifts through a large palette of colors and tones. One can hear sequences, sampled instruments, unstructured sound, and isolated musical events. If there's a technique of making electronic music that hasn't been employed on this album, I'd be hard pressed to say what it is. Eclectic, yet strangely coherent. You won't dance to it, but it certainly bears repeated, and careful, listening. I grow to like this more with every spin.

Leatherstrip: Solitary Confinement. Electro-industrial the way God intended. You maybe like the idea of Front Line Assembly, but it's never really Touched Your Monkey? Look no further. Blistering synth textures, aggressive and intelligent beats, and a mindset of predatory pleasure give this stuff the Mojo. And Claus Larsen doesn't waste it by beating you over the head with the same riff for 50 minutes. He's got a good sense of song and knows how to use contrasts to keep the interest up. But best of all is a demented glee the likes of which I haven't heard since Foetus. It captures a mood that's unbalanced and quite possibly violent, but free of angst. Great industrial music doesn't have to be depressing; it can even be fun, if getting tied up and whipped is your idea of fun. Mmm-mmm!

Bjork: Telegram. Most of 'Post,' remixed by Herself and a merry band of collaborators. Probably a fans-only offering, though there are things here even for the unbjorked. The meat of this disc is the work by Tricky. 'Enjoy' gets twisted into a jaw-dropping Aphexish aggro creepy-crawl. Other tracks benefitting for the Tricky Treatment are equally outstanding. 'Possibly Maybe' is deconstructed into something far superior to the original, and the one original, 'My Spine,' is a bit of very cool gamelan-touched weirdness. On the other hand, the strings-only arrangement of 'Hyper-Ballad' is questionable, the obligatory drum 'n bass mix merely competent, and a couple of the really slow songs are hardly touched at all. Big surprise; no 'Army of Me' remix, which I respect. 'Telegram' is an interesting album in its own right, but most likely only for the converted.

EBN: Telecommunication Breakdown. Emergency Broadcast Network has been at their game of media subversion for quite a while, and this may be the album that gets them some widespread exposure. 'Telecom Breakdown' is, as usual, a showcase for their wry sampling work, but it's the music that really grabs the attention. The satire has moved from schtick to a working element in a great ensemble. This intelligent and hook-laden dance music explores the more musical side of sampling and has some of the best beats I've heard in some time. Throw in some additional tweaking by the like of Eno and Bill Laswell, some hilarious pure collage work, and EBN comes up with a winner.

Aphex Twin: Richard D. James Album The surprising thing on this disc is that Richard James has embraced the drum'n bass approach to electronic music. What's not surprising is that he has taken the jungle form and re-shaped into something that could only be Aphex Twin. Unlike most of the other giants of contemporary electronic music, which have tended to become more complex and expansive over the years, Richard James has pursued a path of minimalism and compression. That aesthetic is to be found everywhere on this album, and it has taken the music to even stranger spaces than on 1994's "I care because you do." Few of the tracks are much longer than three minutes, and they waste no time on exposition. The results are focused, abstract, and in places positively alien in their originality. How does the newfound frenetic percussion fit into all this? Amazingly well, really. The often gratuitous drum-machine calisthenics of jungle are subjected to a strict discipline. Every beat and fill informs the structure of the piece, and the beats - like most of James' musical elements - are pressed into a variety of duties. A repeated snare attack becomes a buzzing bass note, differently pitched toms play a counterpoint to the melody, etc. Aphex Twin could be called our Webern: spare, formal, tightly focused, and insistent on maximizing each part of his musical vocabulary. Sadly, for all of the astonishing new techniques on this record, there is one thing that comes as no surprise: the flip side of Richard James' genius is a penchant for wretched self-indulgence. The second half of "Richard D. James Album" was a separately-released EP, "girl/boy." While "girl/boy" itself is a genuine highlight, it's pretty much downhill from there. Some of the excesses (like "Milkman") are completely unlistenable. At least the bad ideas are confined to bad tracks, and don't spoil great ones (remember "Ventolin?"). But in spite of its faults, "Richard D. James Album" is a landmark piece of electronic music, and the first great record of 1997.

Autechre: tri repetae++. 'More Aphex than Aphex' could be this band's motto. But that's OK, as I'll explain. Autechre is making electronic and vaguely danceable music that conforms to the minimalist aesthetic pioneered by Richard James. Instead of the densely layered and richly textured approach found in most modern techno, bands like Aphex Twin, Higher Intelligence Agency, and Autechre make music driven by the complex interactions of simple elements. On "tri repetae++," Autechre has crafted an austere space where subtle beats and sculpted noise weave abstract patterns, separate, and recombine. The sounds themselves are highly detailed, and favor mechanical textures over organic ones. The music has an introspective and cerebral beauty, but it cannot be described as 'warm' or 'sunny.' The overall feel is predictably sombre, yet never gloomy. There are few tracks which fail to hold the listener's interest, and this good news extends to the second disc, which contains two earlier EPs. The eight tracks on disc two are neither throwaways nor afterthoughts; their high quality makes them very much a part of the whole. "tri repetae++" is a real find, intriguing, sophisticated, and consistent.

White Zombie: Supersexy Swingin' Sounds. It's White Zombie remixes. I love it. So sue me.

Future Sound of London: Dead Cities. First things first. This is not a techno album. It's also not an ambient album. What it is is a collection of outstanding pieces of electronic music. Comes as a bit of a surprise to me, as FSOL made their big splash with ambient noodling that's just this side of New Age muzak. 'Dead Cities' is a sprawling work, spanning 70 minutes and a wide variety of musical ideas and styles. Hard acid sits next to dense, beatless and sample-heavy soundscapes. Some of the pieces are quiet, fluid, and graceful, while others are full of a skittering, anxious energy. It's eclectic without being unfocused. Repeated listening reveals an underlying continuity which is difficult to put into words. Yet it's obvious this is no random assortment of unconnected ideas. Each piece, and each mood, blends seamlessly into the next. At times, FSOL pulls off transitions that are simply amazing. 'Dead Cities' would be good as a collection of pieces, but the weaving together of so many disparate threads makes it great. The profusion of forms and textures gives this album a surface that's hard to penetrate - there is a definite challenge to the listener. But once you've unravelled a bit of the disc's internal logic, each piece opens a window on the whole, and takes on new complexity. With this album, FSOL joins the ranks of those who have left pure dance techno to make serious music.

The Chemical Brothers: Exit Planet Dust. I'm told that this one-disc rave is getting some mainstream airplay. I'm surprised, but pleased - this music deserves some exposure. As techno music goes, this isn't a breakthrough: it's funky, it's got rock-solid beats that never get monotonous, and great hooks. But so