Fast on the heels of his superlative collaboration with the Freight Elevator Quartet, File Under Futurism, DJ Spooky releases this 30- minute- long EP of distinct odds and ends. File Under Futurism borrowed dense, ambient semiotics from Spooky's Viral Sonata (recorded under his birthname, Paul D. Miller), and meshed them with Panacea- tough breakbeats. Subliminal Minded, by contrast, presents few of Spooky's strengths.

Most of the material here dates from his disappointing Riddim Warfare sessions, back when he tried to get all RZA on us. Having been an outsider in hip-hop (but very much the progenitor of illbient), he tried courting the word-flow crowd. His collaborations with Kool Keith and members of Organized Konfusion sounded lackluster, as though nobody had a real sense of what the disc should sound like. Which is very frustrating, since Spooky had previously been so successful; come on, how many musicians can boast of triumphs such as Songs of a Dead Dreamer, Viral Sonata, or File Under Futurism? Each one of those discs are focused, tight, and purposeful.

So Subliminal Minded draws remixes from Riddim Warfare tracks "Peace in Zaire" (by far strongest track on the original album), "Dialectical Transformation," "Rekonstruction," and "It's Nice Not to Lose Your Mind." However, the old adage about building bricks with straw applies all too well in this instance.

DJ Wally's is the first of three remixes of "Peace in Zaire," and like the Dub Pistols' shameless grafting of one of their own tracks ("Cyclone") onto the Spooky track, Wally adds not a thing to the original mix. Only the third mix of "Peace in Zaire" with My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields expands horizons. Shields' avalanches of guitar lay waste to the serenity of the original and give a violently ironic twist to the peace of the title. After all, hasn't Rwanda been laid to waste by internecine warfare?

It's this intelligence we expect of DJ Spooky's works. Though his music is rarely a celebration of life, he, like the Baudrillards and the Foucaults he so admires, makes pertinent, askance observations about the nature of things, and questions why things are as they are. When he produces an album as satisfying as File Under Futurism, which manages to meld the passionate string quartets of Bartok with eviscerating breakbeats, his music blushes with an eerily eroticism. At such times, when Spooky's innate intelligence shuns empty cerebral, aridly academic exercises and overwhelms with his sincere vision, I find it so simple to throw up my hands in praise of him.

However, DJ Spooky's wordsound dialectic gets lost when record companies allow cash- friendly remixers loose on Spooky's astounding philosophical inquiries. Subliminal Minded is just such a cash-in and, consequently, such a shame.

-Paul Cooper