For example, the first track is drum'n'bass...only without the drums. And without the bass. It's composed soley from snippets of words, the voices arranged in a multitude of complex and complimentary rhythms. At last, in a Britney world, something unpredictable.

It's a wonderfully diverse and yet very cohesive cd. It flows from straight-up dance tracks at the beginning like "That Groove", through downtempo songs in the middle such as the beautiful and beatless "Sweetness" and the exotic "Cyclamen", before building back up to some noisier cuts like the drumstorm of "Cyclone" and the breakbeat "Behemoth". Tracks lyrically, thematically and sonically refer back and forth to one another, giving it a unified feel.

"A good director or dj will move you through a range of territory," K.I.A., the man behind shinjuku ZULU, says. "The cds I find myself listening to over and over, like say Moby's "Play" or Peter Gabriel's "Passion", give me a different experience every time I listen to them because they're so varied. The result is I don't get bored with them after just a few weeks."

K.I.A. has traveled a lot and has lived in LA and Tokyo, and he currently resides in Toronto. Those experiences, as well as his background as a visual artist, have had the biggest impact on his music. "Obviously the more you see and do the more sources of inspiration you have to draw upon...all that gets spun into the mix. I perfected my compositional sense first through painting--my visual style is structured collage, so that translated well into the cut'n'paste way I make music. I know zero about music theory, chords, all that, but I have a very clear idea what I want and when a song feels right. It starts in the head, ends in the heart."

And that's what is refreshing about the shinjuku Zulu cd: it's an electronic recording with feeling. Whether it's love, euphoria, loneliness, or aggression, delivered through words or chants or cut up syllables, the emotive quality of the work resonates. (Thanks in part to the lovely voice of Torontonian Larissa Gomes.) Heart, and ideas too: the inspiration for "Funkriot" was to record random conversatons outside a club for lead vocals; seven hidden songs, found only in the insert; the clever use of breaths as a rhythmic element; hybridizing a club song with the style of a traditional Celtic lament; turning a jungle track into a lullaby, and so on...

"The name 'shinjuku ZULU' sorta sums it all up: it's rhythmic, it's melodic. It could be the sound of wind through a canyon or the noise of a bullet train entering a tunnel. It could be any language. It could be a mantra. It could be an ancient curse. Or a siren's love song."