Seldom, if ever, have panethnic musical components been so seamlessly integrated with high-sci instrumental technology as on Mister Heartbreak, a record that, in its pure sonic preoccupations, makes performance artist Laurie Anderson's 1982 debut LP, Big Science, sound like a simple pop album. Assisted by such unlikely collaborators as Peter Gabriel, King Crimson guitarist Adrian Belew and drummers Anton Fier and David Van Tieghem, Anderson and her coproducers, Bill Laswell of Material and longtime associate Roma Baran, have fashioned a series of meticulously layered tonal collages that combine Synclaviers and Vocoders with such exotic instruments as kayagum, shekere and ikonkolo. The result is gorgeous to listen to and, as always with the verbally oriented Anderson, broadly evocative in its punny, open-ended lyrics. From the protagonist of "Sharkey's Day" – who, confronted by nature's rich tapestry, says, "You know? I'd rather see this on TV. Tones it down" – to the incorporeal persona of "Gravity's Angel," who flies in through a window to advise that "the higher you fly, the faster you fall," Mister Heartbreak surveys a musical dreamscape of unlimited suggestiveness.

It is not, of course, a rock & roll album – although there is an eclectic pop consciousness at work in "Excellent Birds," the delicately funky duet with Gabriel, and in the gently cooing "Sharkey's Day," which Anderson playfully trashes in a concluding reprise called "Sharkey's Night," with the vocal turned over to author William Burroughs, doing his best W.C. Fields squawk. Mainly, though, Mister Heartbreak is a seductive soundtrack for a mental movie that seems likely to enjoy a long run in the right heads – maybe yours. Take a ticket. (RS 419)

KURT LODER