Some electroacoustic music should be denoted as "electro-acoustic" � a disconnection of man and machine, in other words. Sure there are works where, say, the saxophone controls a box that generates a sine-wave at the fourth harmonic, and the piano is amplified and mangled with a Max/MSP patch, but the electronics contingent is more side note than crucial to the music. There is certainly nothing wrong with this, and there is much admirable work that fits this bill; however, this trio could care less for that aesthetic, as their pursuit is a hybrid where trumpeter Peter Evans, violinist Jim Altieri and laptopist Sam Pluta (3/4th of the wonderfully titled group Glissando bin Laden members) mash together into an aggressive, multifaceted concoction that (yes, I dare say it) sounds like no other.

With eager agitation, the crew swirls into the opener ("Fusion"), the Pluta and Evans operating sans hierarchy or seam: stutters, key clacks, slurps, distorted feedback, bit-reduction and microtonal machine-gun blips become one multifarious gesture (Altieri is supposedly in there, but picking him out is like spotting the odd stroke in a Rothko painting). The trio continues this assault into "Diffusion", now adding a widened frequency spectrum (i.e. lower register tuba-like growls, blaring synthetic power-on pads). They temporarily find purchase in an affectionate drone of filtered chugging and airy "flute" before shattering the moment into skittering shards. Violin meets choking affect throughout "Sum and Difference A", the coupling producing the results of supersonics as Altieri gradually turns his bow from delicate drags to violent glissandi. His electronic shadow nudges, revs (like an engine), pushes him into a chasm, then courts his arpeggiations with warbling oscillation. On "The Long Line", Evans and Altieri begin with a short-lived independence of sedate two-point counterpoint soon pulled like taffy, laced with a re-sampled canonic clone and chopped into a gated pulse; Evans pokes a hole and lets out a brief swooning melody but his lyricism is soon caught, fed back to Pluta (he thanks the program SuperCollider if you must know) and recycled into a time-shifted collage of ticks and glitching detritus.

Edgard Var�se once said, "I dream of instruments obedient to my thought and which, with their contribution of a whole new world of unsuspected sounds, will lend themselves to the exigencies of my inner rhythm." Possessed with effortless, prodigious virtuosity, this vision was obviously of an instrument called sum and difference.