I'm not a music critic. I'm 40 years old, I grew up listening to the Beach Boys and Beatles, and aside from a brief fling hanging out at Max's Kansas City and CBGB's, I've always been faithfully commercial in my album choices.

In short, I wouldn't know new music if it hit me over the head. For me, a techno-DUH, well, it just isn't happening. And especially to write a review of a new album by a band you've probably never heard of before for THE hippest webzine around, well...

But I take comfort in the fact that I am not alone, that there are a significant number of people my age reading this who will have to deal with new music as their kids reach that age, people who, like me, thought the Chemical Brothers were Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden (this would translate to Gazza and Paul Merson for you Brits who follow footie). From my distant view, techno was boring crap, stitched together little pieces of OPM (Other People's Music) that appealed to people with the attention span of a newt. We'd seen all this before with Kraftwerk, remember?

OK, so what's the quandry? And would you shut the fuck up and review the album already?

Well, here's the problem: I liked the album a lot, but I also don't want BB454 to lose its street cred. I mean, if some bubblegum, middle-aged, balding know-nothing liked this album, then how good can it be, right? How hard core?

Very. You can find another review of this album as well as an interview with Colin Robinson in this issue of Purr, so you'll hear about the influences that shaped this album. It's the seamless way this album flows that impressed me the most, picking up world beats from Celtic to Brazilian along the way, strong jazz flavors and rhythms, even some metal and punk thrown in.

When one finds something new, something never before experienced, and tries to describe it to someone else, one tends to fall back on the familiar to describe it. I hope I don't insult either the band (by implying they are derivative) or the reader (who probably has better things to do than to read a dissertation on artists I'm familiar with) by doing this, but I have to. From the first track to the last on the album, the variety-yet-familiarity of the music was shocking to me. I may not have gotten techno before this, but damned if I didn't get a crash course in new music. This is what U2's Pop Mart should have been like, if that band wasn't fronted by an egomaniac bent on musical terrorism and scavenging the bones of old Korgs, tossed by people with a dream who got frustrated by the corporate mentality.

The band that kept springing to mind after listening to Dentist was Big Audio Dynamite, but even that was too limiting. Captain Beefheart influences are clearly noted, in such songs as "Ales & Cakes." Herbie Hancock's "Rockit" would have felt at home in the middle of "This Is The New Typography." "Throb" could easily have been a mid-Eighties Bowie song. Echoes of Chumbawumba pop up here and there, which are intentional, since the last song on the EP-length tape I received was "Danbert Nobacon Is A Slaphead," an elegy to a band that had it, lost it, and got it back. This isn't on Dentist, but it should be included on the next one.

OK, enough about the details. This album's structure and production values are astounding. There's a symmetry across dimensions that makes this album a must-have. The songs echo the album, a rarity in this sampled world. Again, the biggest fear I had about techno is the whole badly patched music thing. I admit I was wrong, at least in this case. This is practically poetic in its shaping, although the rough edges are there to be seen, which leads to the few negative things I have to say about the album.

For my tastes, I felt there were points in the album where the sampling/overdubbing were a little overdone, a little too busy. In the weakest song on the album, in my view, "How Your Daily Newspaper Is Produced" there is a lot of clutter. It was abrupt, parts possibly recorded backwards, and it let my attention slip a bit, although quickly followed by "New Typography," this is a minor beef. Given the title of the song, it's not inappropriate, but I'm not sure it was necessary.

"The Importance of Trivia," too, saw me wandering the corridors of my mind. It didn't seem to go anywhere (again probably not inappropriate), but again, the album's structure saved the day, since the next song, "Heliopolis Must Burn," heralds a four song arc ending with the title cut that is executed with brilliance and wit.

Indeed, it was finally the attitude of this album that won me completely over. Sardonic, sarcastic, satirical, pointed social commentary that was presented in a way that would have made the aforementioned monomaniacal group from Ireland blush in anger. For example, check these lyrics from "Vector Analysis Can Be Fun":

This room is ten feet long by fifteen wide.
There's room for you and me inside.
My friend lives in an adjacent street.
My room is higher than his by two feet.

In one short, four line verse, we've been exposed to this character: materialism, possession of things AND people, and even this cubicle has to be higher than his friend's.

BB 454's future is bright, if the three additional songs Colin Robinson was kind enough to forward to me are any indication. Instead of running the same old crap through the computer and generating a new old set, the band has set out to create a different sound. As an example, the first song in this EP compilation, "It Takes A Vigorous Baboon To Stir An Enormous Pond," is a tone poem of such clarity and playfulness that you forget someone actually had to write it.

I'd like to say that this is a band destined for big things, but I keep in mind two points: one, I'm a music moron, and two, as an artist in a different field, I know the odds are very long. However, I can say this much: this band is a talented group that you should keep an eye on, because they have made a huge album in I Changed My Dentist...I Changed Him Into A Horse.

CARL SALONEN, de_Valois@compuserve.com, is a budding chaotician who is currently undergoing rehab for his sex addiction at the Dirk Diggler Center. Visit his homepage, if you dare.