I’ve been wracking my brains about Abrasive Stuttering for a while now, and the only logical conclusion that I have come to is that this record was made by an absolute lunatic. There's just no way that a sane person could come up with something this off-kilter and unpredictable. The only other semi-sane person who might be able to concoct something like this answers to the name of Richard D. James.

In reality, Salvo Beta is the deranged brainchild of (presumably sane) Chicagoan Sean Wolfe. Armed only with a slew of complicated electronic equipment, plenty of imagination and lots and lots of caffeine, Wolfe set out to create an album of mind-bending, pulse pounding electronic mayhem. And wouldn’t you know it, he succeeded admirably.

Abrasive Stuttering begins with the heavily distorted sound of someone trying to tune a transistor radio, then erupts into the chaotic metallic clatter and spindly beats of "Loader". The first track sets a precedent that will be overrun and demolished throughout the remainder of the album. "The Gritting Chase of Salvo Beta" sounds like someone trying to shove a drill through his skull, while the methodical duck-in-a-pinball machine beats of "Shift" create a morose ambience that certainly wouldn’t be out of place in a John Carpenter film. The serpentine groove of "Network" and the positively Warp-influenced growl of "Dying Quiet (Music for Rusting, Decaying Robots)" will certainly curry Salvo Beta some favor with the Squarepusher and Mu-Ziq crowd. And the closing track, "Bit", is absolutely massive. Punctuated by a period of silence, the song is a 15-minute slow-burning electronic dirge that shovels pile after pile of sputtering electronic belches, sizzling beats, R2-D2 styled bleeps and distant vocal samples atop an unstable foundation of pure white noise. It is, in a word, scary.

I’m not entirely sure what Wolfe was trying to accomplish with Abrasive Stuttering. But I do know that with many electronic artists (Roni Size Reprazent, Aphex Twin) reduced to half-hearted efforts or complete silence, Salvo Beta could quite possibly rise to prominence on the strength of this debut. Approached with a completely open mind, Abrasive Stuttering has the ability to amaze, frighten and confound, which is just what good music should do. Perhaps Wolfe isn’t so crazy after all.