WARM THINGS

The Russian combo Happy 55 has been evolving with every new album since 2008, and the band's third release was their best and richest yet, despite its sadly truncated length. The big difference here is all the quirky electronic textures provided by newcomer Nikita Bondarenko, adding unexpected depth and variety to the previously unplugged ensemble.

Their aesthetic hadn't changed: it's still the same Avant-Prog classical chamber music, driven by a restless interaction between the piano and clarinet. But the extra synthetics totally changed the dynamic of their style, for the better in my opinion, although orthodox highbrows might disagree. Think of how Brian Eno subverted the glam-rock of early Roxy Music with his primitive VCS3 squiggles; then translate that sound to an instrumental classical/jazz setting.

That burst of industrial noise introducing the album opener "Big Etude" might have been a stray edit from an old Pere Ubu LP, circa 1978. And the unpronounceable "MKRKSMS" ends the album on an unadorned 4/4 rhythm not far removed from actual rock 'n' roll, albeit filtered through an appreciation of Béla Bartók.

Unfortunately, the proposed full-length album was shortchanged when three tracks were rashly excised by anxious publishers, leaving behind a barely 28-minute EP. It's a shame we'll never hear the longer work as originally intended (see the recent "Precise Time" EP for the missing 17-minutes). But I would argue that the abbreviated length actually helps listeners by presenting some challenging music in smaller homeopathic doses.

With so much quality music coming out of Russia these days, it would be easy to overlook a low-profile quartet from the backwater metropolis of Voronezh, some 500 miles south of Moscow. Sometimes, it's the artists who don't call any attention to themselves who leave the strongest impression.