Enemy Within

You wouldn't expect drummer Kelly Shane to be a prolific electronic music artist. After an association with Atlanta pop-scene fixture Kenny Howes, Shane's new Enemy From Space project is one of a host of other collaborations including the Taybacks, Newsboy Legion and New Albanian Riots. But there's a simple explanation for the prodigious work of the solo Enemy: "When you play drums and don't play guitar or bass, you can't record rock songs that easily on your own."

The guitar world's loss is the electronic set's gain -- Shane's interest in the Kraut-rock movement and bands like the Residents is evident on an August 2003 AAJ Records 7-inch split with The High Evolutionary, as well as EFS's new The Condition of Music (Smiley Jones Records). The latter's moody, engaging appetizers build on the "cheap, cheap analog keyboards" and "8-track reel-to-reel" tinkering of 2002's Abstractions (Imperial Fuzz). "I'm really interested in using the studio as an instrument, or the computer as an instrument to make sounds in any way possible," Shane says.

While that may not be a novel approach these days, Shane's fertile intelligence makes EFS more than just the sum of his influences. He adopted the name Enemy From Space from a '50s sci-fi flick by the crew that later produced Hammer horror films. And Shane isn't above giving the nod to Noam Chomsky with song titles like "Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously."

All par for the course for a rock drummer who describes his next electronic album, the upcoming Plastic Orpheus, as "the soundtrack to a non-existent novel" based on the writings of British author Angela Carter. "That should be interesting," he says.