Speed and fluency are no longer enough to make a guitar hero. Yesterday's blinding virtuosity quickly becomes today's practice-room commonplace, as the history of jazz has already shown. Happily, there is still fresh music to be made on the electric guitar, as these two artists from most dissimilar backgrounds spectacularly illustrate. What they have in common, other than their instrument, is highly developed and personal finger-picking techniques and a shared determination to avoid clichés.

Lucas honed his awesome, idiosyncratic chops with Captain Beefheart's Magic Band and more recently has been heard as a solo performer, as well as with Mekon Jon Langford and Pere Ubu bassist Tony Maimone in the Killer Shrews. Gods and Monsters, Lucas's second Enemy album, finds him working with a shifting cast of collaborators, the most prolific being Woodentops singer Rolo McGinty. But if Lucas continues to forge his musical partnerships on the run, Gods and Monsters is nevertheless a breakthrough for him, an album that could serve as the blueprint for a regular performing group. Although his is the principal voice as both singer and guitarist, this music projects a coherent ensemble style and sensibility.

Although it is structurally complex at times, the music on Gods is anything but austere. Lucas builds thick textures out of interlocking patterns, though his unaccompanied solo playing, heard here on "Fool's Cap," "Dream of a Russian Princess" and the Miles Davis-Suicide medley "Jack Johnson/Ghostrider," can get quite dense on its own. The group numbers, while partaking of this intricacy, balance it with soaring melodic flights and, at times, an unexpected but welcome country-rock flavor. Songs like "Glo-worm" recall a more in-your-face Grateful Dead – not at all a bad thing. With this album, Lucas seems poised to break out of his long-standing cult status.

If Toninho Horta's playing sounds at all familiar, it could be because you've heard his distinctive picking and harmonic sleights of hand on albums by Brazilian pop singer Milton Nascimento. Or perhaps you've heard Horta's influence in the work of jazz guitarist Pat Metheny, one of Horta's most outspoken admirers. In any event, there's nothing quite as satisfying as the real deal.

Earlier Toninho Horta albums mined the rich Brazilian-pop vein the guitarist explored so strikingly with Nascimento. On Once I Loved, Horta enlists the services of bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Billy Higgins to make an album of stripped-down trio jazz that is still purely his own. No matter how many times you've heard "Lullaby of Birdland" or "Stella by Starlight," these left-field versions, with their thoroughly revamped harmonies and brooding classical-guitar arpeggios, will be a revelation.

And there are several originals that feature Horta's haunting, wordless singing and guitar overdubs. With enough lyricism to hook pop fans, along with enough invention to satisfy the most demanding jazz listener, Once I Loved shines with a uniquely personal light.

Gary Lucas's Gods and Monsters is available from Enemy Productions, 11-36 Thirty-first Avenue, Long Island City, NY 11106. (RS 649)

ROBERT PALMER