Great music endures because it takes us on a journey. The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds takes us to a surfy, close-harmony, melancholy Eden; the Smiths' A Hatful of Hollow to a Manchester bedsit sopping with teenage identity crises; New Order's Technique welcomes you to a loved-up Balearic beach party where the favors are cut with roach executioner.

All of David Kristian's albums illustrate a place. Tacoma Narrows Bridge subtly outlined the eponymous gorge, and the inherent threat that finally became reality at 11 o'clock on November 7, 1940, when the suspension bridge collapsed. Beyond the Valley of the Modulars mapped alien cities established by glistening chrome-alloy cyborgs with a deeply programmed thing for P-funk. Room Tone, took us to subterranean carparks dripping with humidity and deep-throated intrigue.

Coasting on a languid and primitive-sounding beatbox rhythm, Sawdust, Sinedust, Squaredust's opening track, "Sweepmuffing/Ipana," unhurriedly describes the unusual but immensely time-consuming facts of interstellar travel. Kristian's drafted in what sounds like the "Lost in Space"/"Forbidden Planet" radiophonic workshop to add a 1950s naivete to the depiction. And while "Ping Disco" is dance music for garrulously beeping ATMs, "In the Haunted Silo" is more reminiscent of Kristian's Room Tone material-- reverb-drenched and distinctly menacing.

Though this album is unified by the analog sounds suggested by the title's reference to synthesizer waveforms, Sawdust, Sinedust, Squaredust sounds like a patchwork. A glance at the copyright notice confirms that the record compiles compositions from Kristian's last four years. Consequently, tunes like "Scraping Good Feeling" sound like fictional collaborations with Namlook Fax. The music drifts with meager, tinny percussion merely hinting at direction.

It's Kristian's tendency to meander through past glories that deters me from fully embracing Sawdust, Sinedust, Squaredust. The journey here is very much around a block Kristian's other albums have explored many times before. However, if you're unschooled in his unique electronica, there could be no more comprehensive an introduction to his prodigious talent than this.

-Paul Cooper