Ultimate Sushi

Often the best psychedelic and immersive music has a vaudevillian aspect, and Riz Maslen knows this better than most. Whether under her own name, in dubby mode as Neotropic or making sampladelic downtempo as Small Fish With Spine, her work feels like being ushered into a weird, unruly theatre or circus of the mind. You could just about align this 1999 album with trip-hop, but just as much it’s in that eternal small hours nightscape of Tom Waits, the interplanetary interzones of Sun Ra, the tropical dreams of Les Baxter, or — on the crushingly noisy “Concubine” — in a living, but terrifyingly compelling, nightmare.