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*** Man or Astro-man?

A SPECTRUM OF INFINITE SCALE

(Touch and Go)

Although Dick Dale surf chops and sci- geekdom have always dominated the Man or Astro-man? universe, their latest outing, A Spectrum of In nite Scale, is powered by a more aggressive approach. Frothing tidal waves of math-rock riffs and high-pitched synth squeals smash against the occasional sparse vocal and sample of B-movie dialogue. “Um Espectro Sem Escala,” with its complex tug of war between silence and buzzing guitar chords and a hearty bass attack that echoes the calculated chaos of bands like Shellac and Trans Am, is a prime example of the band’s newfound ferocity. With a lead guitar that wails like an active re alarm, “Song of the Two-Mile Linear Particle Accelerator, Stanford University, Stanford, California” adds to the disc’s primal nature. The album isn’t without its tender moments: “Very Subtle Elevators” plays like a geriatric striptease, with sleazy guitar growls and electronic soda-pop burps. “A Simple Text File” is a solo for dot matrix that manipulates the sound of a working printer to create pure machine melodies. The disc’s mix of raw force and tongue-in-cheek experimentation propels Man or Astro-man? deeper into waves of churning electro-vapor, but they have no trouble braving their own emerging, punked-out turbulence.

— Michael Woodring