Sophistication is a huge bear trap. The flesh- stripping, bone- crunching jaws of this shiny snare couldn't have clamped onto a band more worthy of being so caught. See, the members of the German band Czech are wholly guilty of overproduction, frivolous ostentation, and widespread, directionless farting around. World Mad is a trip-hop album, naturally.

Oh shit. Here I so wearily tread, once again down that sludgy path so deeply furrowed by my tattered boots. Czech have done well to fuse the abrasive solitude of trip-hop with the power- chord wankery of 80's pop. The result is that World Mad has all the relevance and vitality of T'Pau's Bridge of Spies. Surely, the band must have had many stylistic devices to run roughshod over and a lot of conventions to subvert. Yeah, right. How much of a clot does one have to be to churn out an album as histrionic as this? All said clot needs is studio time, a band of annoying vocalists, a funkless German rapper, an engineer intrigued by the endless possibilities of using patch chords as some sort of plumage display, and a keyboardist who finds the warmth and shelter of the studio to be far more appealing than the Hannover street corner where the engineer found him slumped in a piss pool of his very own micturation.

By collecting as many ill- mannered types, you too could scribble down lyrics as weighty and laughable as, "You looked sad/ When you went mad," and con a record label (try Shadow-- they seem to be pretty easily duped) into releasing your wretched attempt at artistic expression. But then again, you would suffer the indignity of being loathed. Or misunderstood. Or simply years ahead of your time. Of course, if Czech feel misunderstood or temporally displaced, their delusion is far greater than World Mad would have us believe.

Shun sophistication! Eschew obfuscation! Avoid this disc, please.

-Paul Cooper