Liquid Fire

If you've got kids who watch TV, chances are pretty good that the Hungarian-born electronica artist Gabor Csupo is already part of your life. You may never have heard his music, but you've probably seen an episode or two of the Rugrats TV show, or Duckman, or one of the early episodes of The Simpsons, all of which were produced by Csupo's animation studio Klasky Csupo. The music he makes on his own — a curiously compelling mix of musique concrète, trip-hop, ambient experimentalism, and electronica — isn't kid stuff; it's generally dark and sometimes scary, though not without humor. He wanders all over the place on this two-disc set, setting nonsense poetry to a bleepy electronic backdrop ("Duna"), juxtaposing a funky breakbeat with sounds of waterpots and a Bootsy Collins-ish bassline ("Horace's Octopus"), and combining what sounds like a cimbalom with what sounds like a machine beat and what sounds like a woman's voice saying "Is it skinny?" Best of all, he takes several recordings of classical Hungarian dances performed by the venerable Capella Savaria and layers them with electronic percussion. Highly recommended to the musically adventurous.