If the names Hampton Grease Band, the New Ice Age, the Late Bronze Age, Col. Hampton B. Coles (Ret.) and the Aquarium Rescue Unit fail to ring any bells, you have a major discovery ahead. Bruce Hampton, the mercurial mind behind all these manifestations, has been an American Ascended Master since his 1969 CBS album Music to Eat was launched upon an unsuspecting world. Passed over during the heyday of Southem rock for crimes of high weirdness, Hampton and company built up a rabid regional following playing grueling club dates across the South until Phil Walden re-formed Capricorn Records last year. Col. Bruce Hampton and the Aquarium Rescue Unit is the result: If you were expecting retooled Allman Brothers, Marshall Tucker or Wet Willie, think again.

Actually, Hampton's Georgia roots are in evidence – there's a bit of the Allmans' jazzier mode of improvising, Sea Level's sophisticated song structures and Wet Willie's cranked-up roadhouse R&B in the ARU's stylistic mix master. But this music is also post-Beefheart, post-Steely Dan, postbebop, post-Dixie Dregs, post-Sun Ra – it's just about posteverything. And somewhere in there, among the superchops soloing on electric guitar (Jimmy Herring), way-post-bluegrass electric mandolin (Matt Mundy) and unison electric bass/scat singing (the astonishing Oteil Burbridge); between the Delta blues/hard soul covers that open the album and the dada lyrics of Hampton's originals; or maybe lurking in the thrash churned up by drummer Apt. Q258 and guests Count Mbutu (congas) and Chuck Leavell (keyboards) – somewhere, at any rate, there's a truly unique sensibility at work. We get hints. Hampton claims that "we never rehearse, and while we have a format, I'm not sure what it is." He sings, "I'm basically frightened of moral turpitude/I'm scared of politicians who have no hobbies." But Hampton is also "basically frightened" of "people who think wrasslin' ain't real." Go figure.

Veteran Capricorn producer Johnny Sandlin (Allmans, etc.) has given this disc such clarity and depth that you keep forgetting it was recorded live in Athens, Georgia, in front of a packed house of Hampton's growing legion of fans. It rocks, swings, smacks, clangs, walks and runs, this music, with its eyes rolled back in its head. I'm basically frightened too, Bruce. In the title tune of an earlier album, you sang of my home state: "I never had much control/Till I got to Arkansas." After hearing the latest from the Aquarium Rescue Unit, I'm afraid I almost understand what that means. (RS 626)

ROBERT PALMER