First question: Is "Floater," the lead track off this relentlessly
claustrophobic maze of vocal-free electronica by Mick Harris and Eraldo
Bernocchi, a reworking of Peter Gabriel's "Games Without Frontiers"? The
spare rhythm and whistle melody suggest so. What's astounding is how
much menace the duo can perpetrate minus Gabriel's millennarian
monologue. And that's just for starters. Variations on the "Floater"
beat, a skewed hard meter with an apparent mind of its own, comprise the
album's backbone. These drum sequences all sound like the trails left
by mildly berserk little "Sorcerer's Apprentice" robots--a scenario that
would make the rest of the music (horror-movie overtones, funky
synthesizer riffs, industrial soundscapes, piping minor-key minimalism)
the work of two men desperately trying to appease the little machines. --Marc Weidenbaum