Grand Mal is a three-piece electronic improv trio consisting of British-born percussionist, sound designer, sculptor and educator Justin Bennett, Anne Wellmer on keyboards, drum machine and Powerbook, and vocalist Stephie Büttrich, and the sixteen tracks of "Perfect Fit" (ranging in duration from 1'33" to 6'52") form an accessible and thought-provoking introduction to the diversity of their work.

Büttrich's multi-lingual texts range from strangled sound poetry ("Moeilijke bijeenkomst") to breathy and beautiful jazz (a wonderful cover of Charles Mingus' "Eclipse"), sometimes in the same song ("Peel me a grape"). "C" (excuse my computer's inability to reproduce the encircled "c" indicating "copyright") finds her reading extracts of copyright law over a gradually assembling triple time techno beat, while on "Schat" she sounds like a bizarre Dutch hybrid of an angry tomcat and Donald Duck. On "707" her standard airhostess safety routine speech, becoming progressively more feral and insane - imagine Laurie Anderson morphing into Shelley Hirsch - will have you running for the emergency exits.

Not surprisingly, Wellmer and Bennett's percussion runs the stylistic gamut from the abstract to the tribal, and the electronics they lay down point all over the new music map from Bennink splatter drumming to Erstwhile-style electronica, tablas, zithers and ARP synthesizers combining to produce intriguing and highly enjoyable music.

"Perfect Fit" is a fine and superbly recorded album that richly repays repeated listening, but if you organise your record collection along the same lines as I do (distinct sections for jazz/improv, rock/electronica and contemporary classical), you're going to have a hard time deciding which shelf to put it on. Get a copy now and worry about that later.