Freedom Magic

Worthwhile albums tend to be as much about the process of making them as they are about the end products themselves. One can almost hear formal, technical, even philosophical questions being asked and answered on them in order to arrive at something personally and politically new for the artist. ''A Box Full of Magic,'' at once sprawling, cosmic, and psychedelic in the best of ways, follows in this album-making tradition. It is a record steeped in kilter percussive time, live recording, occasionally summer cloud-paced tempos, and lush, emotional, melodic instrumentation. ''A Sunrise On the Front,'' the final track of the record (and a composition crushing in its beauty), encapsulates much of this: recorded live on a Rhodes, the melody gives voice to the paradoxical sense of hope even during the pathology of war.

• 1 A Sunrise On The Front
• 2 The Very Strange
• 3 Attack Of The Omnibots
• 4 Oriental Dragon (with Magda)
• 5 An Evil Charm (Where Is The Forest)
• 6 Worlds Above
• 7 A Box Full Of Magic
• 8 Computerized