You may know Brad Laner as the former evil mastermind behind Medicine, whose sticky- sweet melodies slathered in layers of annoyingly loud guitar static took the term "noise pop" to its illogical extremes. After Medicine's demise in 1995, Laner retreated into Experimental Solo Album Hell, releasing A Pert Cyclic Omen under the name Electric Company. Omen was an eclectic mix of dense, freaky ambient- noise collages that were occasionally listenable, even mildly enthralling, but nonetheless sounded like a sub-genius Aphex Twin. Laner may be able to create some cool sounds, but restraint is a difficult concept for him to grasp.

Three years later, after the alleged breakthrough of jungle and drum-n-bass into the mass American consciousness, the release of Studio City finds Electric Company transforming itself into Electronica Company. Laner has always had an interest in England's musical exports; the shambling rhythms beneath Medicine's trademark guitar- fuzz overkill, for instance, paralleled the rise (and quick fall) of the baggy- pantsed Manchester sound. Studio City, by contrast, is firmly rooted in the drum-n-bass ethic of sparse, wiry sound manipulations over epileptic breakbeats. Naturally, Laner has zero street cred as an electronic artist, although many of his signature sounds from A Pert Cyclic Omen carry over into the genre quite well. In fact, the most "standard" tracks are the most recognizable as Electric Company: "Darken An' Slobbering"'s angelic, gossamer synth chords disappear and reappear over a menagerie of distorted drum loops, while "Appendix" is a pure noisefuck, with industrial-ish wheezes and whoops not quite landing on the beat.

Elsewhere on Studio City, Electric Company's experimentation yields some particularly cool moments. "Throb Ear"'s alien blobs of sound and alternately loping and stuttering Casio beats are constantly shifting into and out of distortion. "Born Algebra Skinned" skirts ambient for its first three minutes, then drops a load of phasing, squiggly, muffled beats into the mix, like a TV remote control set to hyper-click. The extended coda "Soundcard" plays like a theme with variations, taking pleasantly mellow electropop and slowly degenerating it into CD- skipping chaos. Throughout the album, drums chatter like insectoid small talk, synth squiggles and sonic cut-ups zoom in and out like radar bleeps, and an unsettling ambience drapes itself over the entire proceedings. But it's not a genuinely creepy, otherworldly feel so much as the lurking suspicion that Laner could spring a new weird noise on you at any second.

If you value emotion, focus, and a coherent agenda at work in music, then Electric Company is probably not for you; Studio City retains the dubious aura of a brilliant but nutzoid musician holed up in a recording studio with tons of high- tech noisemakers and drugs. Fun for him, but less so for the listener. Although self- indulgent noise is more welcome in the environment of electronica than in rock, Studio City doesn't fly as a straight jungle record or as an experimental/ ambient effort; it smacks too much of Laner throwing a bunch of sounds in our faces, just to see what sticks.

-Nick Mirov