Despite what Time Out, Paper and so many other glossy print magazines would have you believe, developments in electronic music are not all British. Out on the West Coast, the totally unaffiliated trio of Kit Clayton, Danny Zelonky, and Shawn Hatfield are creating superbly contorted electronica.

Though their crunchy sound is firmly rooted in Britain's finest (Autechre, Black Dog, and Aphex Twin), each of them take the IDM form and build on it with new structures and infrastructures. Kit Clayton applies the Basic Channel/ Chain Reaction fetishism of crackle, hiss, and dubspace; Danny Zelonky spins in more than a little skronk jazz; and Hatfield (under the concealing cape of his Twerk moniker) wants his downtempo chin-stroker music cut with some heavy Tresor-style techno-funk.

As a futuristic title, Humantics has a wry-smiling provoking charm to it, evoking the whole adapted-human thing without resorting to T:2 melodrama. And appropriately enough, each of these nine tracks sound like a good working relationship between carbon- and silicon-based technologies. Hatfield doesn't mimic the electronic world, nor does he disregard the human world. Instead, he gently gene-splices these two apparent antitheses together.

It's hard not compare Hatfield's work on Humantics to David Kristian, the master of imbuing potential sterile electronic noise with an affecting humanity. Kristian, in the main, wants you supine and hypnogogic when you listen, while Hatfield wouldn't object if you were cutting some serious rug to his tunes. Though, he'd probably instruct you desist raver pacifier sucker, he's no grumpy- draws Dave Clarke techno-maven, either.

"Modern Hulk of Insecurity" spins out a dry wit as it crisply crinkles. "Bluepill" is Autechre or Push Button Objects exaggerated for maximum high-brow tech-disco action, while "Defective Manufacturing" recalls the industrial wastelands of early Cabaret Voltaire, as viewed from a passing P-Funk mothership.

Hatfield, like his West Coast peers, is secure in his style. He's not copped a glowstick and churned out a choon for gurning trance baybeez; nor has he replicated a torturous Jansky Speedranch hard disk collapse. Humantics, like all of the recent, outstanding releases on Force Inc., is a unique and powerful statement-- humans and machines living together in perfect harmony, side-by-side on a PowerMac keyboard.

-Paul Cooper