What hath the Kronos Quartet wrought? A post-Kronos sensibility positively reeks from this release even before one hears the music: the "jaunty" title (no stuffed shirts here!), the selection of composers that come Bang On a Can-approved, even the de rigueur cover of a pop tune (Radiohead's "Nude").

Beta Collide is Molly Barth (flutes), Brian McWhorter (trumpet, flugelhorn), David Riley (piano, celesta) and Phillip Patti (percussion). From this recording, they all sound quite capable, McWhorter rather standing out for the precision and control he evinces. The program begins with the source of the album title, Ligeti's "Mysteries of the Macabre", a somewhat show off-y piece allowing for calculated zaniness on the part of the quartet members � whispers, shrieks, declamations � but not so interesting otherwise. This is followed by the first of three brief works by Frederic Rzewski : "Mollitude" (written for the flutist), "Nanosonata No. 7" and a combination of the two. They're oddly bland with little of the essential passion that infuses the best of his work (including the post-socialist realist period), more depressingly, reverting to the slapping of instruments by hand, an "extended technique" that felt trite enough 30 years ago and seems desperate today.

Valentin Silvestrov's "Trio", in two movements, for flute, trumpet and celesta, is, while traditional in a 20th century, neo-Romantic way, affecting and appealing, silvery and sliding, glimmering like a pond in the sun. "Memories of and Echo", by Robert Kyr, for flute and trumpet, is plaintive enough but tinged with a kind of Orientalism that causes it to feel second-hand and flaccid. Stephen Vitiello, often a fascinating composer, does indeed provide some of the more winning moments here with, firstly, "Waterline", an engaging and mysterious work that uses space very effectively, allowing a sense of breath and air into the work and nary a nod to contemporary "uptown" classical music. Similarly, his "Yellow" operates in low, burbling frequencies that have everything to do with contemporary electro-acoustic improv and nothing with the stuffiness of the concert hall that still clings to Rzewski and others represented here.

"Kryl", by Robert Erickson, even more than the Ligeti, is the kind of composition that blue-haired ladies would fined "irreverent" and "whimsical" (solo trumpet with vocal expostulations) but is simply tired and overwrought in a period where one can hear Greg Kelley or Axel Dorner (or Lester Bowie, for goodness sake! "Jazz Death", 1968, anyone?), already leagues beyond in terms of extended technique and far more mature in conception. Even the Radiohead cover sounds somewhat fresh in this company, which says more about that company than the piece, which is a harmless bit of attractive fluff.