the primeTime sublime Community Orchestra is silly, innovative, talented, self-indulgent, whimsical, purposeful, and they dress up as clowns. They are an orchestra of sorts who skillfully sweep across varying genres, from swelling 1960s film scores to country twangs and from excruciating easy listening Kenny G.-style jazz to the gentle, plucky sounds of Philip Glass.

A listen to The Prime-Time Sublime's new cd, is like an hour-long soundtrack to a six-act puppet show filled with car chases, love ballads, circus shows, and dance routines. The music is comedic and artfully composed by Paul Minotto, the brain behind the talented orchestra. In each piece, he successfully blends modern and classic genres into flowing compositions that keep a tight rein on the audience. The listener isn't lost, and doesn't need a degree in musicology to laugh at their musical jokes. "Fellini's Pickup Truck" is particularly inventive; it moves seamlessly from a solid country guitar riff to a circus-like clarinet solo, then to a bizarre, spacey melding of cuckoo clock samples, xylophone, organ, and other strange sounds that all magically come together to form a brilliant conclusion.

That said, however, it can be exhausting keeping up with their tireless energy, particularly in "Invocation and Fanfare of the Tahitian Garbage Fairies," where they jump from one concept to another, but could have spent a little more time expanding on some of the ideas.

It's obvious these guys are talented. It's also obvious they practice - a lot. They flirt with genres that are not within the normal realm of classical instruments, and they have a lot of fun doing it. Although they use hilarious samples (such as a mooing cow), they don't overdo it. The focus is on the composition and the integration of the chosen sounds, not individual funky noises or samples.

While the band insists on dressing like clowns, Primetime Sublime's latest CD is definitely wortha listen.