I recall a good decade or so ago, I spotted in the local record store a CD by a hitherto unknown band named 'Tesla'. Being a fan of the inventor, I bought their CD, assuming the band would embody the stilted, bombastic otherworldliness of their namesake. I expected - what? A mixture of early King Krimson and Eno-era DEVO? I was disappointed to find they were another of the big-haired heavy metal wailers who populated MTV at that time.

When Mark Sample alerted our little cadre to the existence of a BLP-themed CD by a group named 'Soyuz Postal & Packet', I had no idea what to expect. Since Dr. Mills is currently my favorite living M.D./physicist/inventor/mad scientist ('Buckaroo Banzai' being disqualified due to his being a fictional character), I was compelled to add this CD to my collection. As the little hourglass on my computer terminal flashed during the download, I wondered what I was in for. Would it be another 'Tesla'? Maybe some hot R&B, like Buckaroo Banzai's Hong Kong Cavaliers? Or something - else?

After the CD was burned - I clicked the 'play' button, and held my breath. What emerged was not as numbingly awful as the Shaggs - not as weirdly twisted as the Residents - not as naively demented as Syd Barrett - it was something - else.

Opening with the dysrhythmic raking of an acoustic guitar, we are told in 'Playing the String Theory' that "it's been a lifelong dream to make a spaceship that travels near light-speed". As the chords fade, and we are left to ponder this, the fuzztone is plugged in, and the vertigo begins.

Recalling something like a low-budget collision between Gang of Four and Cocteau Twins, this is the aural equivalent of a toothache, the sort of stuff you play early on a Sunday morning in revenge against your hung-over room-mates. The lyrics appear to be lifted from Mills' GUT opus (in turn lifted from who-knows-where?), and as such, the CD serves confidently as its soundtrack.

But, despite the irony of a fuzztone-distorted refutation of Schroedinger, the vocal declarations ultimately engaged the mad scientist in me, drawing me in to share their vision of a Grand Unified Theory of physics, music, diode-clipping or whatever. I ended up rooting for these sonic underdogs, hoping that they would someday overturn the established order of things, and put a little BLP into MTV - on a Sunday Morning rotation.

Tesla (Nikola) would approve.