Tel Aviv / The Shape of Fiction by Amy Briggs TeenBeat If you're thinking of hot sand and demilitarized zones, you'll be disappointed. Instead scale those denominators down. Smaller. Much smaller. Slap three talented musicians on top and you' ve got an album that approaches infinity. As Tel Aviv's sophomore release, The Shape of Fiction achieves minimalist perfection without being redundant or tedious. Following their astounding 1995 debut, vocalist Andy Comer and guitarist Jay Kraus upped the duo to a trio with the addition of keyboardist Ray Sweeten. The result? Imagine Bedhead or Low plugged into an electrical outlet. Or Prozac as an Atari game. Or your favorite Duran Duran 7" in heavy syrup. Produced by Unrest's Mark Robinson with help from Romania's James Noble, the album is cohesive, refined, and just plain beautiful. The best time to listen to The Shape of Fiction is after midnight, with the lights turned off and your eyes shut tight. The title track, "Introduction," lulls you into a comfortable state of hypnosis with shifting patterns of guitar and synthesizer. From that point onward, your mind grows fuzzy, your memory blurs, and the songs become a matter of personal interpretation. Instrumentals like "The Fiction of Shape," "The Arcades Project," "Photography," and "New York Undercover" sweep through your subconscious in an electronic wash of sound; the complex interplay of rhythm and melody resemble Fripp and Eno's Evening Star, but with more substance, more backbone. Andy Comer's breathy vocals and introspective lyrics imbue songs such as "I Am Particular," "We Got the Computers" (my personal favorite), and "I Have Met a Writer" with a richness that I haven't heard in a long time. Eat your heart out, Lou Barlow. Deep within the inner core of the brain stem is the reticular formation, a "volume knob" of sorts, that controls your states of consciousness. As you sleep, it constantly sifts through and translates outside sound into the subliminal. Pop in The Shape of Fiction, and your dreams'll be the best you've ever had. In the last lines of the album, Andy whispers, "Honey, there is more." Good. I'll be waiting with my headphones on and my head full of stars. For more information, write to TeenBeat: PO Box 3265; Arlington, VA; 22203.

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