Transmutation (Mutatis Mutandis)
Released
Praxis’ first album, from 1992, remains one of its best — maybe its best ever. The opening track lays out what amounts to a musical manifesto: opening with a blast of virtuosic metal guitar (courtesy of charter member Buckethead) and hardcore drumming (courtesy of Brain), it suddenly melts into a slow rockers reggae beat and blossoms into spacey instrumental dub. Things continue in that vein for the rest of the program: funk and metal and dub and hip hop all jostle against each other, mostly in sequence but sometimes simultaneously. This is an exhausting but thrilling album.