by Jack Rabid, The Big TakeoverThe past few years have seen a proliferation of ambient, experimental, improvisational instrumental groups, working with repetitious loops, tapes, sequencers, and the vast palette of sounds available from synths in order to drive you into a state of brain-perplexing waking sleep. It's not new age, it's new Cage, as in John Cage, with a bit of the German Can\u002FNeu!\u002FKraftwerk axis and Bowie's 1977 Berlin days, updated by new atmospherics. This trio (with occasional spoken word vocals from Tamara Battis, who sounds like an operator on a phone line you're not supposed to be getting) is also expert in the inexhaustible possibilities of white noise and of darting and delayed '90s shoegazing guitars as mood setters for the mind-screw atmosphere. Even a piano in Braille seems more like a hazy cloak of mystery than a lead instrument. With remixers such as Low's Alan Sparhawk, Buddha on the Moon (nice dub tricks), and ISAN to tamper with an already camouflaged setting, the results are even more narcotic. Were this an Eno LP, he might call it Music for Ionization Chambers. Warning: Your sonic reality is being adjusted. (P.O. Box 7762, Milwaukee, WI 53207)