Holger Hiller, the Hamburg-born but London-based sound artist, has turned his attention from installation sounds, video operas, editing and producing yesteryear's almost-rans, and writing music for Volvo and toilet paper ads, to devoting himself to summing up last six years of the electronic avant-garde. And, as recaps go, it's none too shabby.

Unfortunately, the description "none too shabby" is not well suited to being applied to avant-garde works. The avant-garde, in order to have an effect, must have some kind of revolting or iconoclastic element to it. "None too shabby" belongs with "Antiques Roadshow" and local amateur dramatic society performances of Gilbert and Sullivan Savoy operas. Perhaps his time as the Mute in-house editor has taken the keenness out of his art-house shriek. Though being tasked with deskanking professional West Londoners, Renegade Soundwave, the Sid James-worshipping Fortran 5, and the fierce and surreal Stump will do that to you, too.

Holger Hiller begins his self-titled seventh album with a collection of sonar pulses and Metropolis-type laboratory noises that ride an Exit Planet Dust-era Chemical Brothers bottom-end. Entitled "Curmbox," the opening track doesn't stick around long, fearful that Hiller might be immediately filed under "big beat/has been." So when "Wenn der Löwe Nicht Fressen Kann" takes its turn, we're intrigued by the Two Lone Swordsmen liquid metal effects that squelch around a surreal Teutonic nursery rhyme. But it's Holger's incorporation of kindergarten elements here and elsewhere that trouble. Surrealists, since the days when Dali's moustache was mere bum-fluff, have raided the baby-room for oh-so hilarious and psychologically threatening themes. I find the over-muffin conversations between Presidential Prayer breakfasters far more likely to encourage terrified bowel abandonment than yet another ravaging of Mother Goose.

As if sidestepping another pigeon hole, Holger presents "Micki Mouse," a clever fusion of Einstürzende Neubauten gratings and wallopings with blasting Ligeti brass and strident Penderecki strings. Here, Holger charmingly posits that, despite the bazillion dollars he rakes in daily and could be spending on medication, Disney's mouse is still a foaming psychotic rodent with teeth keen enough to gnaw through front doors and gloved three-fingered hands strong enough to abduct whole neighborhoods of slumbering infants. Yay. Somebody's telling the truth at last. Grassroots radicals, fuck protesting the World Bank; how about playing this tune outside your local Disney Store?

Just as Hans Platzgummer's brand of installation-ready drum-n-bass gets Holgerized during "Come," Laub's unsettling vocal squirmtronica becomes the inspiration for the unsettlingly vocal writhe of "Once I Made a Snowman." "Sur la Tete" and "Falsches Füllsel" exhibit Holger's expert mimicry of µ-Ziq/Aphex screech-n-bass. And not to be left out, the amniotic fuzzy dub that Pole and the Raster Noton crew get up to is given a tribute in the form of "Then I Cut It Up into Little Dream Units," a track that truly exceeds expectations and outstrips its title in twisted beauty.

Pity, then, that Holger Hiller closes with some truly dull moments. The xylophones and nursery rhymes return during the redundantly chasmic "Toy Shop Shop Toy" and some lazy trip-hop lady rails against scumbag shag-frenzy males during "L'amour Fou."

As a survey of what has provoked and menaced us over the last six years, Holger Hiller succeeds on balance. However, we're left with no clue as to how Hiller hears the future and how he will contribute to the sounds that will alter our perceptions and expectations. He's obviously capable of such acts. What's he waiting for?

-Paul Cooper