Ben Neill plays a modified trumpet on top of breakbeat and jungle rhythms, so it's questionable why his music is consistently shelved in the jazz section of most record stores. Of course, filing it under "techno" would be just as inaccurate, so maybe the best way to take care of it would be to put it under "Ben Neill Music."

Anyway, Goldbug is the third full- length effort from this mad inventor, and with the help of former Helmet frontman Page Hamilton on vocals and illbient wax doctor DJ Spooky on turntables, it's easily his strongest yet. Like Neill's previous albums, you get plenty of horn action, but this time around, the underlying music is much more solid and far less distracting than usual.

It's gotta take guts to play a delayed horn over techno beats, and it's a miracle that Neill pulls it off so masterfully. But he does, resulting in a genre that is distinctly his own-- a sound that you could play during breakfast on Saturday morning or later in the evening at a funky throwdown.

Less of an ambient ride than Triptycal, Goldbug carries itself on a groove reminiscent of his 1995 Astralwerks release Green Machine, and is well worth the investigation, assuming you can find whatever section it's hidden under at your local music shop.

-Skaht Hansen