Beer can ruin things. Evenings, dry clean only blouses, chances of getting laid. But beer can also lead to snobbery-- the kind of superciliousness that used to be solely cordoned off for chinless wine enthusiasts. But that cliquishness isn't so egregious as beer's other possible extreme: loutish big beat. Beer has clouded many record execs into thinking that hairy hooligans brandishing beatboxes will sell records and produce enduring works. This is untrue. Who (apart from me) remembers Bentley Rhythm Ace? Who will remember Space Raiders?

You won't need beer to heighten your awareness of how damn marvelous Baby Mammoth's sixth album, Motion without Pain, truly is. The album's jazz-crimped fatback funk assures you that the duo of Mark Blissenden and Andrew Burdell are in control and going to gently freak you. The opener, "Elephunk," describes the sure-footed path of a wiggling P-funked electrobot. Though such slipperiness is not reprised until "Danger on the Rocks," the intervening tracks amp up the jazzy contributions of guest guitarist Tom Hardland. "Ebb and Flow" imagines Mike Hedges' pastiche thrown into a D'Angelo R&B; low rider-- chrome alloy wheels sparkle while hot-panted ladies follow the shiny roller down the neon-lit strip. While Hardland's mercurial lines never strive for John McLaughlin melodramatics or ever achieve the soul of Grant Green, his searching lines on "Pacific Glitter" furnish Motion without Pain with a depth that others in the trip-hop cavalcade would crush their filterless Gitanes for.

Motion without Pain achieves so much without relying on or resorting to theatrics. I find most trip-hop/downtempo albums far too enamored of their own chin-stroking referencing or their imagined stylishness. Perhaps because Baby Mammoth's label, Pork, have always hidden their lights under a bushel and shunned mass promotion, this band and their labelmate, Moss, have the freedom to produce the music they clearly love. Unfortunately for the Korn'd and Bloodhound Gang'd masses, Pork's recalcitrance condemns those in most need of relief to a musical universe controlled by mall outlets and conglomerate marketing budgets.

Do what I always do: forestall consuming a frothy brew before listening to Motion without Pain. I will never need assistance to get through such a treat of an album. But I make no apologies for reserving a chilled National Bohemian for Is There Anybody Out There: The Wall Live, a rank record for which I really do require alcoholic enhancement. Chin-chin!

-Paul Cooper