or an engineer, remixer (“Gave Up” on Fixed is NiN’s best ever remix), and collaborator of such repute and experience, Danny Hyde’s first solo release has been a long time coming. But, finally, with A Nature of Nonsense we have just that—an attempt to combine a touch of dark and a pinch of humour, to broaden his industrial tinged electronica.

Unfortunately, one of the main stumbling blocks here is the humour, always a difficult element to shoehorn into music. “Physics Is All Very Good,” for example, stretches a one-line joke to its breaking point, damaging the song’s structure until it’s relegated to mere background even as it gets more engaging and messy. Similarly “Dubya Does One”s stern bellicose beat is sublimated by one of those chopped up George-Bush-being-rude text samples; funny the first few times, a waste of a great beat every other time.

Hyde’s remixing talents come to the fore on two reinterpretations of Coil tracks that Hyde originally contributed to (he was, for a short time, a member of the group). Jhonn Balance’s repeated cry of “That’s what happened!” on “FJ Nettlefold” sounds desperate to convince us that it did indeed happen (whatever it might have been) as he wears himself out into wail over a busted rave beat. The song’s peaks come together providing several clashingly grand moments that leaves some of the weaker material paling before it (see “Athletico Tortilla”s bent Spanish guitar and “Bats Alive” incomplete piano lines). Balance’s other vocal track,“Make Room For The Mushrooms,” takes an oriental melody and speeds it up to match the rattling teaspoon percussion cycling through twisted horn parts and even more twisted wisdom from Balance before the track spins off into oblivion.

Hyde’s retouching of his older material is hit and miss: “Unhealthy Red” (a new “Unearthly Red" from Coil’s Live Four) is similar, instrumentally, to “FJ Nettlefold,” its glitched processed experience a little too hectic with its kaput electronics. “Nasahara Arab” works much better, limping up the scales, chirruping, and squelching along with scuffling beats, erecting some nice tribal styled loops later in the song.

With only a few other niggly complaints outstanding—like the heavy-handed vocal processing on “No One Needs To Notice” (which still stands out as a fine piece of vocal electronic torchery)—there’s enough here for me to want Hyde to speed up the production of his next LP. And who knows? Perhaps working more quickly, Hyde would save some of the preventable heaviness in layers that A Nature of Nonsense feels like its carrying.