Nothing dates a band's music faster than an over-reliance on technology. The analog bleep and woosh of the '70s gave way to the digital bell tones of the '80s, and the '90s cut-and-pastes the most innovative sounds of both decades into faster, stronger shapes. Subsequently, many of today's cutting-edge electronic artists will become tomorrow's Hot Butter (remember the band's 1972 novelty hit "Popcorn"?) And many won't. So what separates the pioneers from the pre-set pushers? The former manipulate the technology while the latter are manipulated by increasingly more sophisticated gizmos. Fortunately, the members of Kent's Full Blown Kirk aren't total slaves to their equipment.

More a creative collective than a rock band, FBK generates riffs, beats and melodies, and feeds them into a computer for a thorough makeover. The results, however, aren't as sterile as that description might make them seem. To paraphrase Rush's "Spirit Of The Radio," you can still make music with feel using all those rack-mounted blinking lights. That's where Krista Tortora's torchy vocals and FBK's ability to craft songs from sound collage come into play. Songs such as "Grave" and "Goddess" display a respect for a strong melody and demonstrate the band's skill at generating a mood to support Tortora's dark lyrical content.

That's not to say that FBK's opposed to chopping up the finished product for the sake of progress. Sections of songs on Zero Day frequently give way to spliced-in beat fragments and stray pet sounds in the fast-cut fashion that drives car commercials these days. That's the technology speaking through the band, and for now it represents the wave of the future. To their credit, if the members of FBK aren't already surfing that wave, they're at least waving back -- and definitely not drowning.

-- Robert Cherry