Howard Bernstein is a scary bald man with a permanent case of red eye. Judging from the pictures, you'd think he'd be the neighborhood slime repository, selling rat poison to 13- year- olds looking for acid. With his golden teeth and frumpy, wrinkled evening wear, you'd hardly believe that such an ugly man would actually be one the electronic underground's most consistently challenging and enlightening artists.

It's admittedly difficult to label Howie B an underground artist. He's hobnobbed with the world's biggest pop stars, even helping produce them (as in the case of U2's last foray into disaster) and his records are generally greeted with fawning on the part of music scribes. Music for Babies, his brilliant ambient ode to his then- unborn child, somehow made it into the record collections of many of the music fan hoy- polloy, despite the lack of anything even remotely commercial. The follow up, Turn the Dark Off, was an altogether more immediately pleasing affair with rousing, cryptic beats.

Snatch makes the case, however, that Howie B truly does not give a fuck about pleasing anybody, hence the "underground" tag. Which is not to say that Snatch is not pleasing. For those willing to tag along with the album's inherent screwiness, the delights abound. Mashing awkward, stuttering beats with full drones and carefully- constructed sound collages, it makes for wonderfully engaging abstract listening.

The opening track, "Gallway," begins by setting off a variety of different looped tones. The sounds collide in a Steve Reich- like frenzy before Howie introduces one of his patented subtle breaks over a head- spinning backward melody of bleeps and buzzes. "Cotton High" begins with a clip from the opening pulsating keyboards from the Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" before composing a seemingly random beat out of muted raindrop noises. "Anniversary" begins with a heavily- treated organ riff that sounds like it could threaten to become a cheesed- out big beat song... before Howie starts lacing it with discordant horn samples and gleefully off- kilter drum samples.

What's most impressive is Howie B's consistent ability to put together a track that remains interesting throughout its entire length. Whereas many working in the electronic field lose interest once they've come up with something remotely interesting, Howie pushes it into wonderful, strange territory. If only others were as ugly as he.

-Samir Khan