How's about industrial improv? Electroacoustic technicians have managed to coordinate and subvert virtually all genre eccentricities within their chosen field (natch Ñ the very nature of "improvisation" fits around the style du jour like a velvet glove); why not bring in remnants off the factory floor as well? O'Leary's follow-up to his Skyshifter collab with the erstwhile GŸnter MŸller might take you aback. Gone are the flirtations with onkyo, with abject digital reductionism, with the glitch itch and slavery to the rhythm: O'Leary's apparently underwent some bizarre metamorphosis and capitulated to the fact that the world isn't a neatly ordered digital playground after all, but a pretty rank place. The inside booklet appoints O'Leary solely with "sound design", a fairly wide marker that takes in all or nothing; we're on mysterious grounds here, places where the earth underfoot shifts violently.

Thankfully, O'Leary's savvy enough not to let these brooding soundscapes become degenerative noise or the kind of clichŽ abandoned by the likes of Throbbing Gristle and other post-industrial noiseniks decades ago. The font of modern technology allows someone like O'Leary to incorporate environmental ambience and give it palpable tension as much as the triggers (or pull-down menus) of itinerant software, as the ominous hollow drones feel trapped within the confines of "Interior."

The title piece references those industrial trappings of old by incorporating jackhammers into its galvanized steel atmosphere, as if Faust, Einstuerzende Neubauten, and Lustmord got together for the penultimate smackdown. "Machina" gets under your skin and stays there, outlasting its welcome care of overly astringent tones and forged metal loops. O'Leary's intent is obvious just from the track titles alone: "Metal" and "Welding" betray a newfound fascination with steel resonances and their piercing reverberations, "Metal" sounding like elves wreaking havoc in an disused missile silo, "Welding" their attempts to put the pieces back together again. The closing "Wood", though hardly redolent of its subject matter, harkens back to the more "pleasing" textures of Skyshifter, but O'Leary's insistence on re-applying the malevolence takes care of any such directives in a hurry.