Khan's last collection of new material fused his signature Cologne electro-funk with porno-sleaze. The cover of 1-900-Get-Khan and the premium rate phone sex line that accompanied it made clear his intentions. He wanted to sleaze you up and vanish with a wink before you began post-coitally wiping-up. His intention for No Comprendo, though, is simply to prove that he's got hipster friends who love and respect him for who he is, and not just for the amazing head he gives at a single chirp of his steamy beeper.

Being hipsters, they share Khan's love of pantomime-transgressive acts. I suppose we're to believe that Khan and his collaborators will attack their material like the battling roosters depicted on the cover. But no. It's all rather polite and genteel. Beginning with a song about breasts the size of deployed airbags ("Les Gros Nichons"), Khan and Stereo Total's in-house Vanessa Paradis, Francoise Cactus, takes a turn into the village of infantile smut and heads back home with virtues and honors safely unmolested.

Sometime Nick Cave collaborator, erstwhile Cramp, founder of the Gun Club and certified massage therapist Kid Congo Powers fumbles getting to the nub of "Why Hurt Flesh." Rather condemning the pain inflicted by dominatrixes, Powers rephrases the question in multiple ways as the accompaniment hobbles along on Khan's electro approximation of psychobilly.

During the falsetto gut-bucket nonsense of "Monster" and "Fishies Fuck," Jon Spencer, stripped of his Blues Explosion, yelps and grunts like a eunuch impersonating Billy Idol. Obviously, the spirit of rock music has left Spencer's body to possess ex-Make Up frontman Ian Svenonious' wiry frame, leaving Spencer crippled and turning out parodies and approximations of his former glories. It doesn't help matters that Khan's squelchy Play Skool keyboards remain flatlined through the entire track, or that he's dashed off accompaniment to these two horrors in a shorter time than it took for Spencer to grab his Lizard King pants, tussle his mane, and slip his skinny feet into his winkle-pickers.

Hanin Elias of Atari Teenage Riot joins the fray with "The Bee"-- alas, not a cover of the rave classic by Scientist. No, Elias urges us to "feel the sugar on my lips" as Khan's powder-puff version of an ATR track gamely supports Elias' kindergarten tease. Up next is Julee Cruise, last considered relevant in 1847 when Nathan Scrote's gothic novella, Twin Peaks, caused a Virginia hamlet to give up baccy farming and become a comedy town of backwards-speaking dwarves and nonsensical plot devices. Since then Miss Cruise has toured the oddball slasher circuit to little acclaim, a feat which she notably upholds on the unmemorable and predictably atmospheric "Say Goodbye."

The true star of No Comprendo crushes Cruise's cloying contribution, earth-mover-style. Diamanda Galas brings her Plague Mass noise to the party and trounces the fakers and fops. Hers is the true voice of transgression. Pity, rage, sorrow, and rebellion are locked in a titanic struggle for dominance, and during "Aman," Galas' wordless vocalizings console and shred with equal ease and severity. Khan matches Galas' chthonic screeches and angelic whisperings with seismic rumbles and a bassline that flows like molten rock. Never does he attempt to upstage Galas; he's secure enough in the powerful majesty of her performance that he feels no need to embellish her.

"Aman" is everything that Khan should be willing to provide for and to expect from collaborators. It's a shame that a producer with his command and skill at creating effective and affecting electronic music should be distracted by the Nickelodeon louchness that Spencer, Powers, Cactus, and Elias bring to the table. Khan is just too distracted by cosmopolitan tawdriness of New York. If he wanted true transgression, a duet with the child-buggering Brooklyn rapper Necro could have distinguished Khan in ways that the Barnes and Noble-friendly Matador may not have appreciated.

Nonetheless, Khan's labelmate, the Bionaut (aka Jorg Burger), has managed to continue to produce fascinating electronic funk. To my knowledge, Burger sees no reason to go headlong down the same shit-spattered bowl as Khan. With his previous album, Khan gave us a telephone number so we could talk things over with him. I get the indelible impression that if we tried to discuss No Comprendo, neither of us would understand the other.

-Paul Cooper