How about this then? Drum-n-bass's own Tetsuo, Panacea, has teamed up with Kahimi Karie- esque cutie- voiced Hanayo for a 40- minute pummelfest of devastating magnitude. And the kiss off is that it's the most approachable material Panacea has shoved up our collective rectum in yonks! Whoop! Whoop!

Panacea's usual M.O. is to distort the bejeezuz out of any unfortunate drum beats that mistakenly wander into his murky lab of sadistic terror, crank up his analog synths to "maximum headshred" and let the frenzy roll out for 70 minutes. Twisted Designz, his previous effort, more than generously exemplifies this technique.

However, Hanayo has reached inside the corrupted viscera of Panacea and found sensitivity, or at least a rough- around- the- edges subtlety. You'll have to listen a couple of times before this quality reveals itself, but I assure you, it's there. Surprisingly, it's not Hanayo's vocals that are this gentle side. In fact, she actually sounds like she wishes to shriek her way into Atari Teenage Riot, especially during "Monster Zurgen." On "You Hungry Man," she's the lost hermaphrodite side of Aphex Twin's "Come to Daddy" persona. It's all very frightening. But when she ululates on... erm... "I am Tamagotchi" (I know, I know) you get the sensation that Hanayo isn't entirely possessed-- that she can be saved from her mechanical manias.

In fact, she and Panacea are at their most radiant during their recasting of Johan Sebastian Bach's "Ich Steh' an Deiner Krippen Hier." Here, Panacea remains almost beatless, airy, and in the best possible sense, Eno-ish. All this while he blends elements of one system (the Baroque cantata) into another (muthafuckin''ardkore drum-n-bass). "Ich Steh' an Deiner Krippen Hier" is astonishingly graceful and worth getting this disc for alone.

Unfortunately, Panacea follows up that beauty with the sub- Tangerine Dream of "A Million Lightyears," a track that seems to consist entirely of swirls, whooshes and really dull sequencer runs. For the next three tracks, the album loses its previously claw- tight grip on our attention.

However. After a replay of "Hallo Hitler," a song that first appeared on the Electric Ladyland VI compilation, the album's back in top form with the closing wonder that is "Coma." The track ceaselessly reminds me of Underworld without the tribal beats. Panacea has generated heavily echoed tectonic plates of sound that rub up against each other to release a slow moving energy of great intensity. Panacea harmonizes in his finest Farinelli falsetto over the top and resolves into tranquility the tensions and the shrill anxiety of the previous 40 minutes.

-Paul Cooper