As Richard Strauss' already overplayed tone poem Also Sprach Zarathustra Op. 30 gears up for ubiquity this new year, commentators have already begun to gauge the accuracy of Kubrick's vision of 2001. Let's see. Pan Am Airlines? No. Sentient mainframe gone berserk? I guess not. Proximity to further human evolution? Not readily discernible. What we do have is Unisex. You might consider them as a sly futuro alternative to the all-too-familiar triumphal fanfare of the Strauss piece.

The grating pun aside, Stratosfear is a deftly crafted slab of British psychedelia-- that's the smart, menacing kind of psych, not the cloying, hemp-necklaced kind. Stratosfear is Britpop smeared across galaxies: hooks, riffs, and eminently singable lyrics crystallizing into constellations among a hot, white soup of pulsing electronics, reverberating feedback and lush arrangements. Drawing mercurially on everything from Radiohead and Spacemen 3 to Os Mutantes, Fuxa and Flying Saucer Attack, Stratosfear is gorgeous, elusive and huge.

The opening track, "The Full Force of the Sun" melds dripping Tangerine Dream-like soundscapes, vocoder-drenched vocals, and crunchy guitar riffs into perfect space-pop. Unisex manages to make a song of wheezing cybernetic vocals and squealing Casiotone anthemic. "Departure Lounge" is phased exotica: smoke-filled, seductive and punctuated with purposive vibraphone. Cocktail jazz piano floats almost sleazily in and out of some kind of cosmic pick-up. "The Anti-Gravity League" is pure Mutantes: swirling tropicalia, male/female harmonies, and the limpid plucks of Brazilian guitar propelled by light Latin percussion underneath. "Sidekick & Emo" toys with thin jungle beats, clarinet, vibes, theremin and the groovebox. These three tracks bound together present a bizarre interlude of downtempo erotica, achieving what spacerock outfits can seldom execute: making the future an altogether sexier place.

The dazzling "Autopilot" and its technological ennui brings Unisex closest to the Radioheadesque: lovely piano, twittering groovebox, and the crying chorus, "I don't want to land this machine." Stratosfear's closer, "In Among the Breakers" is, at heart, stripped-down Nick Drake Brit-folk, launched into dead space, where the plaintive acoustic guitar and piano are girded by jagged cuts of electronic noise, echo and buzzing blips and beeps.

Unisex succeeds because their experiments always rest on a solid foundation of tight pop songcraft: the anthems remain anthemic; the ballads ring true; the forays into lounge music are all subtlety and seduction. Spacerock gets a bad name when excessive effects and indulgent explorations are employed to shore up what amounts to lousy songwriting. Rather than jettison the whole sound, a few intrepid souls are still out to fill the room with nitrous oxide. It's pop but it's somehow extended pop: noisy, diffuse, and just slightly lascivious. Stratosfear is as fitting an album as any to ring in the first year of the future. Human evolution? No, I guess it's not as monumental as all that. But once in a while, everybody needs to touch the monolith.

-Brent S. Sirota