Two decades before Jack Waterson released this, his first solo album in 30 years, Adrian Younge walked into the founding Green on Red member's Future Music, a somewhat ironically named Los Angeles shop specializing in vintage instruments and gear. Waterson facilitated Younge's interest in analog recording, and the two swapped knowledge about records. Younge became a one-man band with engineering and production skills, but he has enlisted Waterson (primarily as guitarist) for all of his projects, from the Black Dynamite soundtrack, to the Venice Dawn albums, to the Souls of Mischief and Ghostface Killah sessions. Waterson also narrated The Electronique Void, Younge's conceptual synthesizer excursion. The majority of these LPs have drawn from psychedelic soul and rock. This showcase for Waterson, however, takes sonic acid mania to the hilt with Younge's cracking hip-hop-grade drums as the foundation. Likewise, the creep factor Waterson brought to The Electronique Void is heightened here to an eldritch level as a singer -- what if Mark Eitzel had an LSD casualty brother? -- whether he's urging listeners to join his "Religion of Death" or making lysergic observations like "Funny how the mirror stares at you." When Waterson addresses his subject on a high wire with "The net waits for you," the floor somehow seems like a less terrifying option to break the fall. These hallucinations are tricked out with much of the same tools heard on Younge's other releases -- the diseased-sounding analog synthesizers, soothing/eerie Mellotron, glockenspiel, and Waterson's electric sitar among them. The only other figure in on the madness is Ali Shaheed Muhammad, somewhere in the mix on the last two songs. Did he make it out? ~ Andy Kellman|

Rovi