Reports didn't exactly come flooding in, but apparently Vogel's field research for Busca Invisibles took place in discotheques and salubrious Brighton boites. Vogel actually left his studio and went out and danced! As a member of the Cabbage Head Collective (founding member Si Begg aka Buckfunk 3000), Vogel's early forays into musical self-expression were tape loop weirdness and Beat-inspired cut ups. But if you've ever been to Vogel's hometown of Leamington Spa in the British Midlands, you'd know what a disturbing effect such a place can have on a growing lad.

So, with his parietal lobe ringing with his neo-Stockhausen ditties, Vogel abandoned being a Cabbage Head and headed south to the seedy coastal resort of Brighton, home of the cheeky wink, donkey rides across the beach, and shameless one- night- stands with skanks from all over the United Kingdom. Vogel probably told his folks that he was moving to Brighton to get a degree in 20th-century music; not to soak up the low-rent sleaze of his new home and fall in with a no-good bunch of twisted techno heads.

Six months after handing over his first cup- a- noodle- bespattered rent check to his landlord, then-unknown local DJ Luke Slater picked up on Vogel's experimental sound and spread the word around to such an extent that abstract dance maven Colin Dale was soon dropping Vogel's "Aux Culture" DAT into his sets. Dave Clarke followed by signing Vogel to his Magnetic North label and the pair combined Clarke's jazz-imbued rhythm programming with Vogel's passion for outlandish analog noise. By 1994, Europe's techno big boys noticed dear Cristian, and the Frankfurt-based, Gilles Deleuze-worshipping, Mille Plateaux label, known for the abstract experimentalism (and Germanness) of its techno releases, released the superb Beginning to Understand and the disorientating live and improvised knob tweak-a-thon Specific Momentum.

And once Mille Plateux had him, Berlin's mighty club-friendly Tresor label had to have him, too. Vogel's albums for Tresor are geared towards the dance floor, a prerogative that doesn't always bring out the best in Vogel, and Busca Invisibles bears out this criticism. Vogel excels when he generates warped, mechanical tones from his analog equipment and when he complements these alien shrieks and snarls with downtempo dub percussion. Beginning to Understand's "Scuba Dub" is the paramount example of Vogel's skill: it begins a dark blob of sound which uncoils into a squirming slug of a track, which leaves indelible slime trails. But nothing on Busca Invisibles matches it. See, in order to get the kids dancing, Mr. DJ can't offer them weird-ass noises plucked from the patch cords of some twentysomething Morton Subotnik. Vogel's unique when he's concentrating on contorting sine waves, and on Busca Invisibles he showcases this talent. Just not to the extent that he does on his albums for Mille Plateux.

Don't get the impression that Busca Invisbles is a stinker of a dance record. Just as Neil Landstrumm's Bedrooms and Cities release took on the champagne and Versace sounds of speed garage and unfashioned them into raw machine music, Busca Invisibles throttles nu electro and should remind Warp Records that the future and present of electronic music is not Jimi Tenor's lounge porn. Given the choice between the Venga Boys and "Sarcastically Tempered Powers," I know which I'd hurl myself around a club to.

The opening to "Shoe Renouncing Soul" teases with untainted tones before Vogel lets loose his greasy beats and a severely spiked bass line. He starts "Slices of Sink" by aping Underworld's "Bruce Lee" before stomping his hallmark analogia all over the twitching spread; all the while it sounds like he's having tons of fun putting these tracks together. For this reason, Busca Invisbles is a lighter listen not only than his other albums, but also than the output of his Brighton buddies, Justin Berkovi and Jamie Lidell. As the album's title indicates, Vogel may still be seeking the invisible, but you get the impression he got a clear idea where to continue looking.

-Paul Cooper