With most of today's electronic music, you can see the feathers but it still ain't flying. We should remember, however, that this is a new form, one that only recently became interested in entertainment away from the dance floor. As things are, perhaps the most engaging thing about the current revolution (hip-hop excepted) is how computer and sample-based musics have impacted more conventional structures. The list of bands that have been able to pull off an interesting electronica/rock hybrid (see Soul Coughing or Portishead) is a short one. Seattle's Violent Green belongs in this distinguished company.

If you've ever spent a winter in Pacific Northwest, you know why the musicians up there have trouble keeping the Chinaman off their backs. When I lived in Seattle, I remember a two-month period where it rained every day but one. That day it snowed. Black Hole Sun, won't you come? And bring a set of works, will ya? VG frontwoman Jennifer Olay must dig the gloomy weather-- her music is certainly soaking in it.

The brief, guitar- and- vocal "Saltwater Spray" opens From Cycles of Heat much in the way "Jackie" opened Sinead O'Connor's The Lion and the Cobra. If one were to record Olay's deep, androgynous voice "dry" she'd still sound like Boris Karloff, but stick her in an echo chamber like producer Steve Fisk does here and it's like slipping an ice cube down the back of your shirt. "We Lay" follows, driven by a funky drum loop complete with crackling vinyl, and then the straightforward and almost pop (in a Siouxie Sioux kind of way) "In Helsinki." These three styles-- the spacious mood cut, the dark-groove samplefest, and the goth rave-up-- are what comprise most of From Cycles of Heat, with uniformly strong results. It's the kind of record that makes you wish something shitty would happen so you could sit at home by yourself, get drunk and listen.

-Mark Richard-San