The first piece Transmission Tenderloin is a computer based composition which was created for radio transmission during a street party in San Francisco. It’s a more straightforward sample based composition than Brown usually produces. It’s driven by an almost techno beat and severely cut-up samples of mainly vocal samples. Snippets of female singing and moaning over an increasingly juddering and jerking rhythm. It aint hip hop but it’s got a certain feel about it that lends itself to a downtown street party.
The second piece Retroscan is a superb combination of piano and live electronics. The piano strings are scraped, the key playing is abstract and multi-layered, and the electronics transform the notes into a tapestry of freeform sound. Solo are built upon each other while other more noisy or distorted passages are layered over the top. It’s concept is built around ideas about memory, and the sounds from the piano are fed back into the interactive computer system and replayed with alterations in pitch, length, volume, so the listener experiences a sort of musical Deja-Vu. Quite melancholic at times, while still retaining an edge of contemporary experimentation. 

The title piece is a noisy combination of turntables, William Winants percussion (and bull roarer) and Chris Browns electronics. His style of manipulation and cut-ups are quite reminiscent of Roger Doyles work with combining electronic and acoustic sources. Winant infuses the electronics with a myriad of percussive objects and surges from his bull roarer. Like the first piece, there are many highly sequenced and cut snippets of vocals inserted into the disorientating mix. Perhaps a bit cartoonish, there is however never a dull moment.
Flies is perhaps the most interesting of the works here. A chamber piece performed by the Abel-Steinberg-Winant trio but with the added interest of an interactive computer system that has been designed by Brown to mimic the processes of a fly. The computer system is "fed" the violin parts of the piece and it then responds by processing the percussion and piano sections. The result is an excellent combination of colourful violin playing combined with very atonal and processed percussion and piano.

The most starkly electronic work on the CD is Cloudstreams/Bellwethers. Again a work for interactive computer programs but this time using no acoustic sources. Here the movement of two networked computers mice generates the data that drives the synthesis program. The result is a rather disorganised mass of highly processed noise. There is a second element to the piece, that of a sixty cycle drone and a synthetic bell solo triggered by performers whistling or singing into their computers. It’s good on theory and im sure it’s fun to actually perform, but on CD it’s less than attractive.

The last piece is the longest on offer and is an example of Browns mid Eighties work. Alternative currents is a highly engaging work that combines two invented instruments from Brown, the first a Wurlitzer electric piano prepared with springs, wire and other metal objects to use as tone generators. The second instrument is percussive object build around long bronze rods that can be bowed or struck. All this is combined with parts for Bass Trombone, and a synthesized orchestra. It’s probably the most purely electro-acoustic and interesting of all the music on the CD. It retains a quite low-fi appeal while being very sci-fi in it’s actual sound. The trombone sections mixing well with Winants percussion and Chris Browns Dr Who (no offence Chris) sounding electronics.  It has a restrained tone and gentle movement that is a relief from the in your face style of most of the material presented here.
An interesting retrospective of an underexposed composer.