**1/2 The Baroness

ELECTRIC MANOR

(Sunburn)

San Francisco DJ the Baroness applies her semi-sweet funk style to the chilly tones of 14 songs that the CD's liner notes call "freeform American electronica." Her basic remix technique is a simple overlay, which, given the plasticity of "freeform," ensures that the dancer cannot tell when one song departs and another makes its entrance. Because the Baroness's music moves sideways -- one rhythm across another, circling rather than making melodic headway -- her sequences of beats, voices, sound effects, and synthesized obbligatos merely nudge the dancer, lazily. Even her staccato workouts (for example, Hawke's Spanish-language "Vivos en la muerte," a truly darkside song) follow a curve rather than reach a destination. Woven tight in the Baroness's echo effects, Hawke's mournful music arcs and arcs until it morphs into the next song, Little Wing's "Thing Two." The Baroness's curve-around style becomes definitive in Symbiosis's "Of the Mind and Spirit," in which rough and sad techno synth riffs revolve around each other, perfectly complementing each other's imperfections.

-- Michael Freedberg