fter leading the burly shoegazer-rock-cum-psych-dub band Furry Things in the mid-'90s, L.A. producer Ken Gibson (aka Eight Frozen Modules, among several other pseudonyms) started his electronic-music odyssey in I'll-try-anything mode, like a less extroverted Kid606. Albums like 1997's The Confused Designer (Trance Syndicate) and 2001's Random Activities and Broken Sunsets (Phthalo) flared in multiple directions with a raw, flagrant restlessness that only erratically succeeded. On these discs, Gibson flirted with drill & bass and knife-edge IDM abstractions that rarely dropped into 4/4 lockstep. His productions were rough and untutored, but they showed potential. With 2002's Thought Process Disorder: [Delusional Malfunction] (Orthlorng), Gibson entered what we'll call (without any condescension or irony) his "mature phase." By this I mean he started to show a command of his tools that approaches master status, like some kind of Jaco Pastorius of the PowerBook. Gibson coupled this mouse-pad mastery with an almost grotesque visceral quality in his sound design, as exemplified by titles like "Repulsive Guzzle" and "Diarrhea Of The Brain." You can hear in Thought Process Disorder and in Gibson's new 8FM full-length, The Abduction Of Barry, vestigial traces of the slapstick sound effects often heard on releases by Rephlex, Tigerbeat6, and Skam. Most of the time, this is a very good thing, depending on your tolerance for tonal japery and rhythmic tomfoolery. If you've spent any time playing video games or watching cartoons, you'll probably be sympathetic to Gibson's aesthetic.

Beginning with the ominous scene-setter "In The Midst Of A Breakdown," which sounds like an orchestra tuning up in a wind tunnel, The Abduction Of Barry soon whiplashes you into "Acute Episode," recalling the infernal DSP'd tone thickets Jamie Lidell erected on Muddlin Gear and Otto Von Schirach excreted on, well, everything he’s ever done. Gibson conjures a feeling of overwhelming disorientation with choppy, mulched beats, crunchy/crispy textures, and those cursed elf voices people reportedly hear while under the influence of DMT, allegedly the most potent psychedelic drug extant.

Most of Barry zig-zags by in the absurdly hyperkinetic mode of Squarepusher. This approach peaks on "Micro-Iconic Feature": amphetamined abstract beats splatter Pollock-like all over the stereo field while a subtler strain of insectoid digitalia obsessively/compulsively twitches below and melodic wisps of classical grandeur floats above, reminding of New York producer Datach'i at his orchestral drill & bass best. But Barry's not all madly spastic beat programming and vortex-sucking textures. At least four tracks explore the queasier extremes of ambience. "The Arrival" consists of the shrill, fibrillating cries of a Buchla Synthesizer in its death throes (mercifully, it lasts only 72 seconds). "Adversely Affected" hints at Gil Melle's creepily toxic 1971 soundtrack to The Andromeda Strain. And "Learning To Socialize" frazzles an old alarm-clock bbbrrrreeeeennnngggg and melds it into a Phill Niblock-esque drone, creating a dry-ice chill-out piece, which seems like the perfect conclusion to this unnerving work, as Gibson achieves a rewarding tension between soothing consolation and disturbing undercurrent.

Especially within the electronic-music world, the producer-as-mad-scientist trope has become something of a cliche, but damn if it doesn't fit Ken Gibson like a straitjacket. You can call Barry IDM, but I'd love to see the double-jointed octoped that could dance to these frenzied rhythms. A team of music major PhDs would have trouble trying to divine Gibson's time signatures. This music sounds as if it's literally tearing at the seams. Is Gibson being seriously playful or self-indulgently masturbatory? Both, actually, and I thank him. To Gibson's credit, the music here's so interesting, I really don't care if by album's end I don't know who Barry is or why he was abducted.