The main technique I use for sorting the men from the boys in this reviewing lark is the extreme baseline technique. Let me explain. In my life, I've exposed myself to extreme situations, not out of nonchalance regarding my own mortality or for the masochistic thrill of risk, but so that I may have an extensive archive of abnormal experiences with which to judge every moment I walk this Earth.

In order to judge pain, I contracted a rare meningeal condition. In searing, cortex-rupturing agony, I suffered experimental surgery. Now when I get a boo-boo, I run my fingers through the still-springy-to-the-touch furrows in my skull and console myself that the minor injury could be a whole lot worse. When I was in college, I witnessed the most drunk a human male could become and live. My housemates and I, having relished 746 quarts of Carlsberg Special Brew, forgot to pass out. Instead, I watched as two of them repeatedly threw themselves down a flight of stairs. Needless to say, the morning after was not only heralded with a bastard-behind-the-eyes hangover, but also major contusions and 48-hour paralysis.

When reviewing, I also use extreme baselines of excellence as well as ones of disgust. These reviewing baselines are pan-genre and are obvious. Pet Sounds, Otis Reading's Otis Blue, and Pale Saints' The Comforts of Madness at one extreme; Anthea's Words and Beats and Yes' Tales From the Topographic Oceans at the other.

So where does Jamie Lidell's debut album, Muddlin Gear, fit? Upon first listen, all but those of you who wake up to Merzbow would term Muddlin Gear "unlistenable spunkjazztossfrenzyfuckshite," and would prefer to deal with a suppurating glans rather than suffer a rewind of that spastic electronic crap. But let me tell you, a burst bell-end is a whole lot less enjoyable than Muddlin Gear.

I agree that, initially, Lidell's record is a tempest of fuzz, 220bpm jungle beats, and interplanetary lounge jazz. But once you get past the gag reflex, you can delve deeper into the album's tight constructions which only seem to blast apart. Lidell's time as one half of Super_Collider, with the skillful Cristian Vogel, should have been a giveaway that he don't produce nothing if not a sweet smelling turd.

Where Vogel's Rescate 137 album, released about the same time as Muddlin Gear, toned down the frenetic runaway towtruck beats and scorching beams of white noise, Lidell's album conceals the delicacy with heavily splenetic tricks. And beauty abounds during the record, but it's more of a Cronenberg beauty than a Merchant Ivory one.

This beauty radiates fully in the closing moments of the final track which glimmers like the gaseous giant that is Tangerine Dream's pre-Streethawk masterpiece, Zeit. But in order to get to "Daddy, no lie," we got some mountains to traverse and some jungle to cut our way through. "Ill Shabata" begins with a duet between Pavarotti and someone throwing his guts up before a 303-sounding chainsaw slices through this cartoon scene. "La Scappin Rööd" is bacterial bleep jazz, such as the Mars Lander discovered under a rock late one Martian afternoon.

"Silent Why" riffs on Miles in a woodblock-scraping style before the Autechre algorithm gets nasty on some electro beats innocently passing by. More Miles gets abducted for "Da Doo Doo"-- this time it's Chick Corea's tinkling electric piano that competes against the ambient sounds of monumental structures sheering. By comparison, the clicks and cuts of "The Cop It Suite" make a soothing glitch of a light respite. Which leaves us with my pick for highlight, "Dröön_99," which is nothing less than Charles Mingus and Teddy Charles' "Laura" remixed by a stratospherically bolloxed Danny Zelonky.

Jamie Lidell has taken the Trash Collective's aural-invasion aesthetic and tweaked it for far subtler ends. Though this album doesn't present a baseline criterion, Muddlin Gear will prep you for when the body-snatching pods land to give you the most visceral baseline experience of your life.

-Paul Cooper