The latest artist to benefit from increased major-label interest in electronic music is trip-hop act Dr. Octagon, which was recently signed to Dreamworks by A&R rep Mike Simpson, also a member of the production team the Dust Brothers. The label will reissue the group's hard-to-find 1996 debut album, which consists of former Ultramagnetic MC "Kool" Keith Thornton working with San Francisco-based producer Automator and turntable wizard DJ Q-Bert.

Released on the obscure independent label Bulk Recordings, Dr. Octagon's mix of stripped-down beats, atmospheric synths, and mind-altering sound effects made the album something of an underground success, as well as a critical favorite.

"I was just blown away," Simpson recalls. "I grew up listening to rap, but I haven't really listened to it in the last five or six years. I put this thing on, and I was just like, 'This is amazing! This is the future of music.'"

Three months later, while speaking on a panel in San Francisco, Simpson had a chance encounter with Nakamura. The two producers became friends, and Simpson notified the top brass at Dreamworks when he heard the group was looking for a label. The deal makes Dr. Octagon one of the first of a new breed of genre-crossing electronic acts signed to a major label.

Though electronic music has started to receive ever-coveted MTV exposure, such acts are still tough to market. Dreamworks plans to take advantage of the momentum the album already has, reissuing the self-titled debut with five new songs within the next few months and putting out a limited release of the instrumental-only version of the album (appropriately titled "Instrumentalist") soon after.

"We're definitely marketing it as a hip-hop record," says publicist Dennis Dennehy, "but we're finding that a lot of his fan base is alternative kids. I think this is the kind of record you can break in more than one direction."

Simpson agrees. "Just seeing the people who are already into the record -- the Foo Fighters, and all these bands from different styles of music can really feel it -- it's interesting, because on one level it is a rap record, but it appeals to fans of so many different styles of music. It breaks down all these boundaries and exceeds all these limitations that are put on any one genre."

It's hard to classify the new sounds being created by artists like Dr. Octagon and DJ Shadow, but listeners are already beginning to notice them. David Seamons, a buyer for Tower Records in Atlanta, points out that what he calls "groove music" sells steadily without much airplay or promotion, and DJ Shadow's critically acclaimed "Endtroducing" regularly outsells more established artists to chart in his store's Top 25.

"If you listen to where music is heading," suggests Seamons, "between dance music and groove music -- trip-hop, acid jazz, whatever you want to call it -- you can see that things are changing. If you listen to the new U2 or David Bowie albums, you can see that even older bands are trying to get up on the new stuff."

And where listeners dare to tread, commercial interests -- including major labels and MTV -- are sure to follow. Simpson says MTV is so excited about the album that employees are constantly calling to request advances, and he predicts the group's soon-to-be-completed video will find a home on the network's electronic music-oriented show, Amp.

"Kool" Keith, for one, will be more than happy to get such exposure. "I'd like to start hearing some different things musically," the rapper says. "We're so confined in Americ