Supergroup alert! For those of you who feel violated by the mere idea of Ringo Starr leading an all- star jam session with John Popper, Mani, Steve Vai, and Billy Powell, you may turn away now. Those of you with hardier constitutions, please consider El Stew the acceptable face of showbiz self- indulgence.

El Stew's lineup boasts super- dooper turntablist and member of the hugely gonged Invisibl Skratch Piklz, DJ Disk (well, he altered his moniker to PhonopsychographDISK, but whatever), Eddie Def of the Space Travelers, producer, Extrakd, Primus's reigning tub- thumper Brain, and last, but by no means least, idiosyncratic guitar- terrorist and KFC container- as- millinery apostle, Buckethead. This record was born out of an ex-tempore get together, which, though far from being a sludge of moist caca in heavy precipitation, turns out not to be quite the hearty hunk of cosmic slop that it should have been.

The preoccupation of this group is mad scientists concocting mind- warp brews or loopy inventions that turn out to destroy most of mankind. In short, you're trapped in a fifties' sci-fi b-movie with an underground hip-hop soundtrack. I can hear most of you yawning, and to be honest, my attention has wandered while listening to this disc. It's the most obvious scenario for a bunch of professional musicians to latch onto in order to prove to the world that they're a zany bunch and really, honestly, couldn't sight a music score scratched down by John Zorn on a table napkin down at Tonic.

It's not like there aren't moments that jump out, though-- Buckethead makes his presence felt on "T.H.T.S.L.E.E.," a track driven by his paint- stripping guitar lines, or the "Day the Earth Stood Still" menace of "Brah." But too often the session buddies settle for retarded samples of, for example, ducks quacking, snippets from children's story tapes, and b-movie dialog for cheap effect.

El Stew grooves away to its heart's content and rarely to our amazement, which is what we should expect from such luminaries. But such is the disappointment of supergroupism, young Grasshopper. I guess that Disk et al. want their audience to be blinded by their stellar reputations rather than ponder what splendiferous, mad hip-hop this could have been. El Stew-– did you really intend on creating the folly of follies, the "Plan 9 from Outer Space" of turntablism?

-Paul Cooper