This joint release's motif can be traced back to its namesake: a dado blade is a tool used by woodcutters to cut complex channels and grooves. The four artists who appear here -- Shawn Onsgard, Aaron S. Davidson, Melissa Dubbin and Jared Ashburn -- make their sounds in a similar fashion, repurposing and rearranging explicit source materials with precise cuts to create new works, distinct from their original context. While the concept of what they're doing isn't new, the foursome accomplishes some impressive output on this twelfth installment of the Audio Dispatch series.

The members of Dado Blade work individually, separating the album into four distinct regions. All things being equal, Onsgard's contributions are the most compelling. With eight of the 20 tracks presented, he makes some inspired choices, delivering scrambled death metal on "Fanfare/Kill Or Be Killed" and "Only Death Will Make Them Stop", and manipulated spoken word on "Patient With A Number Of Obsessions". And on "A Word From The Oval Office", his chilling, Negativland-styled collage takes George W. Bush's State Of The Union speech and extracts its hidden, fascist meaning. A marvelous piece, it's one that will make you break into a cold sweat if you have any concern about the world at large.

The other three artists take less obvious paths. Davidson incorporates such sources as chatty ham radio operators and a dying Casio keyboard, while Dubbin processes a combination of low frequencies, jazz performances and field recordings for an digi-organic freeflow that sometimes devolves into the rhythmic. And Ashburn, with his needle-dropping sampling technique, fills his offerings with stuttering windows of sound through crackle and hiss -- a novel approach that I found inspiring.

All in all, Dado Blade is worth checking out. The average ear will hear noise, but discerning listeners will be interested in the different processes at work.