The irony isn't lost on me. There isn't anything resembling percussion on the reissue of Hugo Largo's 1987 EP, Drum. There are delicately plucked strings, swooning operatic vocals, slow ponderous basslines, yearning violins and celestial lyrics, but not a drum to be found. I get it.

I don't mean to sound cynical, but there's nothing more disappointing than the reissue of a putative classic that has simply failed the test of time. Hugo Largo's debut coalesced on a downtown New York scene dominated by Sonic Youth circa Sister, the cryptic etudes of Glenn Branca, the Cobra strategy works of John Zorn, and the totalitarian mechanics of Carbon. Set among all this noise, Drum might have held the seductive lure of a siren. Airy and melodic, but utterly bereft of guitar and percussion, Hugo Largo staged open defiance of the contemporary experimental scene by setting chanteuse Mimi Goese's spectral voice over spacious Eno-esque ambiance. Roger, not Brian.

The emotional restraint of the sound is overcompensated for by Goese's heavenly histrionics, presaging everything from His Name is Alive's gothic Livonia and Lush's Spooky to the Dead Can Dance catalog. At its worst, Drum drifts on the silver seas that will soon be forever claimed by Enya.

Now, caress yourself solemnly for a moment, almost as if there was a sudden draft. That's right-- we're in the presence of Stipe. R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe garners a production credit on this EP, and perhaps we can attribute the overwhelming emotional nakedness of the music to his tender and humane guidance. "My love is like a ruby that no one can see," Goese intones in the confessional tides of Drum. "Second Skin," the second to last track, is the only song that suggests Hugo Largo's sonic capacity: the piece pulls and thrusts under the phantasmal refrain, "I'm wearing a second skin."

But beyond this, Drum is alternately overblown or dull. Perhaps we can regress with sympathy to the autumn of the Reagan era, to a time when the experimental music scene seethed with dissidence and alienation, and appreciate the work for its clarity and fragile loveliness. Unfortunately, as the Clinton era wanes, nobody is all that interested.

-Brent S. Sirota