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If you're not familiar yet with acid jazz and its sub-genres -- trip hop and ambient groove, this release by San Francisco's Slide Five would be a good place to start.

If you ever wondered, years ago, what music would sound like in "the future", that distant world of computerized everything, space travel, unimaginable far out inventions, and utopia -- this is it. Future music; the soundtrack for a trip to another dimension; music from a distant galaxy; a vision from the beyond; Slide Five is all of the above.

And it's all done with traditional instrumentation. The keyboards (mostly a Fender Rhodes patch) are played through a reverb setting which produces a drone-like after-effect, giving the sound a hypnotic quality. The guitars are filtered through liberal doses of wah wah and echo, which gives the mix a decidedly psychedelic slant. The super-syncopated electronic drums anchor the mix with a street-smart, post hip hop feel.

Although the musical ideas themselves are basically simple (there are no real "melodies" per se), the kaleidoscopic shifts of instrumental voicings prevent the sound from becoming monotonous.

The only time the spacey mood is slightly broken is on the tracks "Heavy Rotation", "What Comes Around", and "Travelogue", which are rooted more in earthly funk than in space. These tracks are among the four "bonus tracks" from the group's previously unreleased EP "Flash", which explains the difference in feel from the rest of the album.

Maybe in ten more years there'll be a "new" all acid jazz radio station. Fans of Slide Five will be able to say they were into that stuff in the nineties when it first came out.

**** (four stars)

MARK TOWNS

Check out track samples and other info for Slide Five on Music Boulevard.