When I was in high school, our school district had this thing called CEC-- the Career Education Center. It was a separate facility where students could spend a couple periods once or twice a week in vocational training. I really have no idea what most kids went there for-- floral arrangement maybe, or the sort of in- depth mechanical training that just wasn't available in their home schools' auto shops. I do know of one thing that CEC had, though, and that was a professional- quality recording studio.

But, y'know, this is vocational training we're talking about here. CEC didn't offer classes called "Rock Star Modes of Thought" or "Intermediate Mad Flow." The studio didn't exist for musicians; it existed for engineers. Kids went there to learn to ride the board before heading back to their home schools and honing their skills doing sound for the drama department's production of "Bye Bye Birdie." Some of them stuck with it and eventually got jobs at local rock venues, getting yelled at by various famous assholes. Some of them are real live working engineers now, getting paid to do something they really enjoy, and maybe even work with people they admire and respect.

Of course, there still had to be musicians around for these guys to practice on. And so CEC saw what I imagine to be an endless procession of one- and- a- half chord punk rock bands, Phoebe- esque singer/ songwriters, DJs with five whole records in their collections, and MCs with all of the attitude and none of the skillz. These guys would get into the studio, earnestly miss notes and flub lyrics for a day, and at the end of it all, I guess they'd have a DAT to play for their friends. The real enterprising ones would take their DAT and have cassettes run off, and they'd have their older cousins or brothers-- students at the Denver Institute of Art-- design an album cover. Then, they'd take the thing down to Kinko's, and bam-- a debut album.

Now, I don't know who Brock Landars is, but all the signs point to him being a CEC student. First of all, whichever cousin he asked to design the cover didn't even manage to spell Brock's name consistently, and the misspelling is above the title, in really big bold type. The artwork is the sort of "hip," "urban" "statement" which recycles the same old "graffiti"- covered subway car and "tagger" font in an attempt to "keep it real" and show how "things" are on "the street." And behind the typo- ridden, by- the- numbers cover art is 52 minutes and three seconds of weak, by- the- numbers techno, mixed with weak, by- the- numbers transitions and supplemented with samples that even a four- year- old would find stale. Seriously. I used to be a preschool teacher, and I can see it: "Hey Brandon, did'ja hear what Brock just dropped?"

"Man, teacher, that was 'Close to the Edit.' That shit was cool when I was like negative six."

"Yeah, Brandon, you're right. Um... watch your language or something."

Okay, let's be honest here: I know jack about techno. I've never really understood the DJ disc concept, and all the artists on this CD (Sniper? Narco Dogs? General MIDI?) are new to me. For all I know, Brock Landars is the underground DJ Supreme of the ultra-hip ultra- secret New York sizznene, and the artists he's mixing here the cream of the muthafuckin' crop. But I know this much: if this is underground, I'm glad I'm up here on the pavement where the air is clear, the birds are singing, and nobody's ditching 6th to cut a record.

-Steven Byrd