IN CERTAIN PARTS of North America you can trace lineages that have a given stylistic character - or shared interests - to a certain group of composers. This exulted music culture has been slowly spreading over the years at an exponential rate well beyond the values once held by the musicians working in and around the Louisville, Kentucky grid. Today, what we are reasoning with is this growing network of musicians desperately trying to identify themselves - from very small scenes that were sympathetic to their sound - now find themselves working a lot harder to bring it into less sympathetic i.e. "conventional" places. Redefining their own codes of unorthodox musical boundary into a shifting of ideas overlaying the existing framework - which to begin with was unconventional by design - may or may not appeal to those of us who respond more fully to music that is not occurring in its proper place. Our old accommodating club is no doubt about to take place in the framework of the new-music culture, for better or worse. With almost all four members operating outside the group in other projects coming back with particular interests and passing them on ("Lifted Bells" is an obvious TORTOISE influenced dub number that well, doesn't quite fit the fluid set of material; altho I do like the steel pole banging a la Sean Meadows). JO44 have always worked within a community not bent on egotism revealing how clever they are; but rather outside the commercially viable pretty-sounding glossed over music. Free form architects "arriving from somewhere else" with recognizable melodies and tone bursts. I respect them for this. Their delineated musical activity has epic possibilities. Listen carefully, take a lot of notes, and learn. The future of rock music is evolving from all angles and attitudes; and we don't want to be left eating the stuff of synthetic worms . . .