Every so often, Data Breaker swerves off the beatseeking path for a much-needed detour. Believe it or not, one can tire of beats. Occasionally one craves music that's mostly devoid of rhythm, music that's more about textures, drones, strange samples, and the narcotic deliverance of intelligently designed noise that subsumes the artists' (and one's) ego into the maelstrom. Ergo, I focus this week on Hototogisu and Dialing In.

Who? You're probably justified in not knowing these artists. Hototogisu (Double Leopards' Marcia Bassett and Matthew Bower of Skullflower/Sunroof!/Total, all of which you should investigate) take Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music (his sonic "fuck you" to RCA Records) as their jumping-off point. From that ear-blasting foundation, Hototogisu gyre relentlessly into the inferno, erecting firewalls of sound that drone on for so long they become meditative, proving that even constant explosions can zone you out. If heard on a bad mushroom trip, however, Hototogisu's music could cast you into labyrinths of insanity.

Sardonic Wooden Moonlight and Prayer Rug Exorcism (both 2005) sound like the churning angst of all of history's oppressed industrial workers manifesting in a grinding squall of condemned yowls and steel-girder conflagration. They have parallels with '60s free jazz/fire music in its brute communication of inchoate rage and ability to make most other music seem like fussy, effete canoodling. Ghosts from the Sun bristles with tormented noise, strangulated yells, hellish whirs. It's remorseless bamboo-shoots-under-the-fingernails stuff. Green is Hototogisu's most concise, structured, and tranquil release, but it's still far from conventional rock; imagine the Dead C. jamming with This Heat at their most ambient to get a grip on Green's sculpted din.

Dialing In (Seattle psychedelic sound scavenger Reita Piecuch) is about to release her second CD, Cows in Lye, on New Zealand's respected Pseudo Arcana label. The disc is a densely layered bricolage of field recordings executed in India and Seattle, plus piano and shruti box (a harmonium-like drone generator). Cracked crooner Herb Diamante appears on "Diamantes Call to Prayer," lending a Lynchian creepiness to Piecuch's throbbing DMT symphony. Elsewhere, Piecuch improves upon her strong debut, Ketalysergicmetha Mother, in her ability to forge beautiful tones out of sonic chaos (hear especially the mbira motif thrumming throughout the turbulent "In the Mojave"). Throughout much of Cows, there's a lavender-fuzzed, oceanic lull similar to that on My Bloody Valentine's Loveless; it's a sound in which one can luxuriate for hours.

One of the attractions of listening to artists like Hototogisu and Dialing In is that their inscrutable, mutable abstractions allow for diverse reactions. Like aural Rorschach tests, music like this facilitates conjuring imagery in listeners' minds that ordinarily would never have entered their headspaces.

Hototogisu and Dialing In play Wed Aug 16 at the Electric Heavyland, 252 NE 45th St, electricheavyland.com, 7 pm, free; and at Rendezvous, 2320 Second Ave, 441-5823, 10 pm, $5, 21+.

BEAT HAPPENINGS

FRIDAY AUGUST 11

PAOLO MOJO
I'd never heard of London DJ Paolo Mojo, but his Balance 009 double-CD mix on EQ Recordings is impressive. Dude is big-room-friendly yet also deep enough for the underground techno/house cats who scratch their beards to Underground Resistance, Nathan Fake, Wighnomy Brothers, Sascha Funke, and Ada. Unlike most jet-setting DJs, Mojo shrewdly balances buoyant uplift with bullshit-free groove science. Sasha, John Digweed, and Pete Tong all sing Mojo's praises, but you should check him out regardless. With Eva. Element, 332 5th Ave N, 441-7479, 10 pm–3 am, $5, 21+.

SATURDAY AUGUST 12

BRIAN ANEURYSM
As a DJ, Brian Aneurysm (Dallas via Vienna artist Bernard Pucher) plays dark, driving, minimal techno that's right up my fucking alley. He doesn't mess around much with tracks possessing frivolities like sugary melodies or memorable choruses; rather he favors cuts with menacing vocal snippets geared to unsettle and seriously warped textures that embroider the 4/4 rhythms like barnacles and barbed wire. Besides his wily acumen behind the decks, which he's honed for a decade, Aneurysm also has releases on Spectral Sound, Sub Static, Immigrant, and his own Iron Box Music, so you know he can deliver the goods on wax, too. (He's also collaborated with underrated minimal-techno artist Maetrik.) Krakt's promoters score another coup. Re-bar, 1114 Howell St, 233-9873, 9 pm–2 am, $10, 21+.

TUESDAY AUGUST 15

SING SING
Death of the Party hosts Flosstradamus, a genre-smooshing, Chicago-based DJ duo (Josh Young [J2K] and Curt Cameruci [Autobot]) who strive "to get kids to go crazy." How do they threaten the mental stability of our youths? By introducing crunk to the indie rockers and then sneaking in a ton of other secret and not-so-secret club weapons through their three-deck/Serato/Final Scratch setup. Flosstradamus are iPod-generation disc jockeys who ignore stylistic boundaries like you avoid looking at MySpace adverts. If you don't like a track they're calling up, hang tight for a minute and something better may pop up on the screen. With Pretty Titty, Fourcolorzack. Havana, 1010 E Pike St, 323-2822, 9 pm–2 am, $5, 21+.