Two years. That's how long it will take for chill-out to kick Moby and Fatboy Slim out of the American spotlight and into obscurity. You'll be like, "Chemical Twins? Huh?" Gun violence will be vanquished; spousal abuse will fall to an all-time low. School children will have books in their libraries and the elderly will be released from the oatmealy confines of retirement communities to teach us young whippersnappers how bloody marvelous it was back in the days before emancipation.

And all of you will be gently competing to relate what a rapturous experience it was when you first heard Coldcut's version of "Autumn Leaves" or bragging how little you paid for the double vinyl edition of the Irresistible Force's Global Chillage. So while we patiently wait for that gentle tide of beatlessness to wash over our blistered and bunioned toesies, the Seattle/NYC duo 310 present their third album, The Dirty Rope, to ensure a frictionless transition.

Coming on like the Groove Armada/Godspeed You Black Emperor! collaboration you all but abandoned hope for, The Dirty Rope is by turns cinematic and bounding. "NOD" offers a delicately stirring tabla-n-bass experience, undercut by the indiscrete big beat whomping of "Frosty Bardum." But we must thank 310 for getting their Fatboy selves out of the picture by this, the record's third track-- it frees up the rest of the album for the grainy, noir-ish chill-out this band was put on Earth to produce.

Often recalling the adept use of found sound and dialogue used in the film-without-images Sidewalks of New York by Uri Caine's Tin Pan Alley project, The Dirty Rope succeeds by providing us with audio clues to visual events. But these triggers aren't the melodramatic fits of your average multiplex blockbuster. Still, 310 are sufficiently aware that the typically floppy-fringed Sundance festival soundtrack won't satisfy, either. Perhaps the closest approximation of these cues would be Brian Eno's On Land (especially evident during "Under the Blue Words") or the tape-loop experiments of Steve Reich. But sometimes the music is enough in itself: "Pacific Gravity" overturns its burdened title by being a soothing unfurling of pedal steel guitar and snoozy beats; while "Six Month Zazen" is Scorn on liquid MDMA-- still slow, but ever so blissful.

Though considerable less art-house than Scanner, 310 won't likely become top choon on Salinas Beach, Ibiza, either. Still, if you're lucky to live in the shabby gentility of an East Village loft or even have a hankering for such a lifestyle, you need look no further for the habitation- installation music of your dreams.

310's achievement notwithstanding, I'm open to bids for a mint condition DJ-friendly 2x12" vinyl edition of Wagon Christ's 1993 somnolent Phat Lab Nightmare. Be ahead of the coming chill-out curve! Go on, you know you want to.

-Paul Cooper