The most distinctive thing about the new Chain Reaction CD is that it doesn't come in a metal box ; it comes instead in a biodegradable digi-pack. Otherwise, this compilation of new and previously vinyl-only tracks by producer K. Soublis is fairly unremarkable. The basic parameters of the Chain Reaction sound are as familiar by now as a well-worn pair of blue jeans. The gaseous synths, blunted metallic beats and deliberate surface noise are all in place here, as are the po-faced track titles ("Lapses," "Pendoulous," "Opaque") and the 10-minute running times. For aficionados of this particular sound, it might help to know that "Vibrant Forms" has more melody and higher bpms than the label's more abstract releases. Which makes the album a fairly standard exercise in minimal techno, without even the strength of avant-garde conviction to justify its existence.

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Fluxion
Vibrant Forms
[Chain Reaction]
Rating: 8.2

By some accident of temporal distortion, Vibrant Forms was reviewed in the 1807 edition of Hutton Mathematical Course (vol. II. p. 279). The reviewer, Dr. Hutton, remarked that "the direct method consists in finding the fluxion of any proposed fluent or flowing quantity; and the inverse method, which consists in finding the fluent of any proposed fluxion."

Now it seems to me that Hutton's review is a bit crap. But I excuse the old chap, because he only had the CD, and not a player. He was missing the key ingredient to getting it right! It's no wonder that Hutton considered that Fluxion's perilously dub- inflected heroin house sound was some "flowing quality" as he waved the shiny surface around on the florid wallpaper of his smoking room.

I, however, have both required elements with which to appreciate Vibrant Forms , and appreciate it I truly do. This disc is the seventh wave in Chain Reaction's multi- layered plan to scintillate the world. Though you'd find this disc in the "Dance" or "Club" section of your local Sam Goody (some hope!), you'd be hard pressed to dance to it. Fluxion (or K. Soublis as he's known to his chums) has included all the right stuff that would make for a good time, four- to- the- floor, hands- in- the- air choon. However, he's caked his vibrating wonders in menhir- heavy blocks of white noise, dirt, and paranoia- inducing echoes. This crushing sound is the trademark of Chain Reaction.

And, by jolly, it works a treat! It's as though each track is irradiating giga- Curies of harmful rays that'll surely rearrange brain tissue at sub- molecular levels. At the same time, other noises Fluxion generates are like the infinitesimally small fall- out from a faster- than- light atomic particle zapping through the Earth's crust on its non- stop journey towards the boundaries of time, space, and God Himself! Oh, yes!

Aside from the staggering analogies that I can't stop myself from drawing, Vibrant Forms is fascinating because Fluxion (like his Chain Reaction peers) doesn't generate pioneering sounds of Out There like, say, David Kristian, Low Res, or Sugar Ray do. Fluxion, the egoless ascetic, makes use of sonic, trans- uranic pollutants such as the sounds that a fluffed up needle makes, or the cracks and pops endemic to listening to music on vinyl-- these discrete micro- sounds Fluxion dapples upon the megalithic blocks of caressed white noise. This approach points to only one intent: Fluxion is a bag person. He raids the garbage sack of techno for stuff other musicians would clean up in Cubase or with Sound Tools. And he locks these rhythmic units and his smooth curved white noise into loops that spin until reaching steady state bliss.

The word "hypnotic" barely scratches the surface of the effect he creates! It's a seventy- minute glance into the piezoelectric microcosmic splendor of a grain of filthy road salt. I have divined the proposed fluent of this fluxion and it truly is vibrant.

-Paul Cooper