TG 11

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Getting electronic music and the live-band dynamic to bed down together can make for an awful lot of ruffled sheets and awkwardly splayed limbs, but Austrian three-piece Radian has achieved a workable arrangement. Drummer-programmer-and-vibraphonist Martin Brandlmayr and bassist John Norman lay wobbly and wiry free-sounding rhythms as capably as your favorite Chicagoan entities. They keep things tight enough to groove yet just relaxed enough not to tangle up Stefan Nemeth's squirrelly spurts and schpritzes of high-frequency digital and analog noise. TG11 delivers on the promise of 1999's exciting, deservedly buzz-borne "Radian" EP. The trio's excellent follow-up evidences an even stronger sense of group rapport and intrepid spirit. "R4" twitches to furious, desperately funky life beneath Nemeth's carpet of charged crackle and Brandlmayr's diffident drum-and-vibes flourishes. Here, on the bewitchingly kinky title track, on the just-barely ballasted "Tornio," and on "Okazaki Fragment," Radian's surprisingly surefooted balancing act invites parallel with no less than the gymnastic floor show of '73-'74 Can. Elsewhere, Nemeth takes the upper hand. He issues cavity-cleansing kiloherz on "Sinus 440," "Ucotherm," and "Kadjet," goading his cohorts into negotiations resembling I.S.O.'s perfectly realized improv directive. Norman and Brandlmayr steer clear of close contact with the caustic fallout of Nemeth's Korg MS 10 on "Spektr" and seek immediate shelter from his white-hot pelting on "Moveg." As impressive as TG 11's main course is (and we're talking about a disc immediately in Top-10 of 2000 contention), the best is saved for last. The concluding "I/E" presents Radian as more of an integrated and ego-free organ, sublimating vibe harmonics, string vibrations, and electronic effluent in a truly radiant (sorry) electro-acoustic coda that very nearly matches Viennese improv paragon Polwechsel move for move in measured, metamusical mastery.