Along with the spoons, the washboard and the clog, the musical saw is forever relegated to the corner of the closet for instruments no one can take seriously. Oh, sure, it's part of this country's epic folk-music tradition; the thing is a household appliance, for chrissakes, and it sounds like a ding-dang whooping crane with digestive problems. It's certainly not the sort of thing with which hip, important people should be occupying their hip, important time.

This just in: they are. From its stunning, revelatory use in Neutral Milk Hotel's oeuvre as a creator of endless, angelic, voiceless choirs, to this here new LP from Hopper, a guy so hip he gets to hang around with people who hang around with Stereolab, the musical saw is cropping up on all the most chic records this year. But Kev Hopper not only employs the saw on Whispering Foils, he makes it the central piece of his avant-pop racket.

It's not fair to treat Whispering Foils as an all-saw, all-the-time trick show, though. Eschewing the rootsy traditionalism that most sawists look to the instrument to provide, Hopper incorporates it into his sampler-based soundscapes, making it sound more like a sci-fi sound effect from the mid-'50s. If you were to cut out all the weird samples of cows and chickens on the opening track, "Waiting for Baby," it could almost be mistaken for the sound effects track for Plan 9 from Outer Space.

That sense of rural good humor persists throughout the record. Instead of concealing the saw's weird musical character, Hopper revels in it, playing giddy, funny solos while accordions, marimbas, assorted drums, and electric guitars zip in and out of the mix, traveling the funny/cheesy divide with as much skill as the saw itself.

Hopper, by the way, lives in England, and apparently used to be in a band called Stump. He's evidently made several records of this experimental saw music stuff, and as much as it's possible to say this in light of the fact that he's pretty much making up the genre as it goes along, he seems to really know what he's doing. There's an array of startling percussion tracks at work here (the aforementioned livestock, what may be dishes breaking, firecrackers), all fashioned into coherent rhythmic statements by Hopper's sampler work. The effect is identifiably rooted in the sound of mid-'80s Tom Waits, but it's hardly a rip-off.

At their best, Hopper's tracks conjure an organic equivalent to Mouse on Mars' squelchy techno, sounding current and folksy simultaneously. And even though there's little precedent for this little project, Hopper's worked enough with his chosen palette to expand and explore as he wishes. Not only is he a master at his instrument, he's damn near the only one. If you want to hear an experimental exploration of the power of the saw, Kev Hopper is perhaps the only man who can show you what that takes.

The only thing that holds Foils back from unmitigated success is its periodically flippant attitude. Though the whole album, wordless and cockeyed, is exceedingly silly, it trips itself up with genre-mixture for the hell of it at times; High Llama Sean O'Hagan's songwriting contribution, "Lamalou les Bains," for example, seems like a '60s-pop parody in search of a purpose. But so long as Hopper maintains his balance of playfulness and serious sonic exploration, Whispering Foils is a pleasure. He may be the only game in town, but it's still a great game to be in on.

-Sam Eccleston