Force and Form is Surgeon's third album and, on this one, he's managed to get the perfect balance of Tresor- trademarked relentless beats and unnerving ambience. Hey, it's the nightmare you can dance to! But be warned-- the phantasmagoria of Force and Form only lasts forty minutes.

Though Surgeon's previous albums, Balance and BasicTonalVocabulary were never a threat to Smash Mouth's dominance of the pop charts, this techno cognoscenti paid much attention to Surgeon and his skills. Mick Harris of Scorn produced remix twelve- inchers of each album, which further amplified the terror in the 'tronics. We can see his previous releases as preparations for this, his big techno statement.

But before releasing this outstanding album, Surgeon got his largest exposure when he versioned "Mogwai Fear Satan" for Mogwai's Kicking a Dead Pig remix project. It'd be a big fib to claim that Surgeon's mix was the most appealing six minutes on Mogwai's double disc set, but he certainly made a lasting impression with his all- endangering, swelling torrent of pure noise. Fear Satan?! Bollocks! I'd fear this bloke in a hissy fit any day of the week. Even in a good mood, I bet he'd deck Merzbow. Force and Form does nothing to disabuse us weaklings of this stern image, and Surgeon has gone out of his way to broaden the extent of his mastery. With muscular authority, he's Colossus striding the Kingdom of Experimental Electronics and the People's Commonwealth of Well 'Ard Bangin' Techno. He'd be the techno wunderkind of the Ayn Rand Foundation if those fascists ever stopped dissecting Parsifal and went out clubbing instead.

During four long tracks, Surgeon provides more beats and weird- tronica for your buck than most of his experimental techno peers. "Black Jackal Throwbacks" is as fascinating and as... well, plain groovy as anything off David Kristian's superb Beyond the Valley of the Modulars. "At the Heart of It All" proposes that in the center of the cosmos, a precisely regulated, shimmering, perpetual groove keeps the surrounding infinity funked up and ready to dance. By way of contrast, Surgeon offers "Remnants of What Once Was," which is surely the most uncompromising ten minutes of techno produced since Jeff Mills' Purpose Maker record.

Like Mills, Surgeon has the conviction of his musical vision. He's not going genre- hopping like more bankable artists. He's reassured that a small, select crowd of people will be awed by his collision of electronic tones and throbbing beats. And I'm sure that Surgeon'd be delighted if, on the cold aluminum table in his operating theater, you'd submit to his might.

-Paul Cooper