pon saluting this collection’s title, you might expect your friendly neighborhood music writer to blather on for eight solid paragraphs about the “cultural peculiarities” and “ethnic implications” of this music. And you would be so retardedly accurate in your assumption. However, I’ll do my best to free you of such collegiate ramblings, as I’m not so sure the music at hand demands a lesson in cultural anthropology. It does conversely call for lots of big words and snooty, ornamental talk, so deal.

Antologia de Música Electrónica Portuguesa (or Anthology of Portuguese Electronic Music for those incapable of removing vowels from the ends of exotic words) is perhaps not the best representative title for the recordings under consideration. Our compilers could have done better. The music showcased on Antologia is quite specific, far more specific than the full spectrum of “electronic” music (unless, of course, you’re employing the AMG definition). During its conception, you may have called it atonal, ambient or modern composition. The newer generation might venture on to brand it as IDM or microsound. Neither the geezers nor the sprouts would inevitably be wrong here. In any case, Antologia is essentially three things: 1) electronic, 2) experimental, and 3) beatless. It’s a teensy smidgen of professorial noodling for that ass. And if words like “Fennesz” and/or “Eno” mean anything to you, chances are Antologia will too.

Thematically, Antologia is particularly solid. Despite its 30-year range of compositions (1977-1997), the album tangibly sounds as if it could be the work of one artist or ensemble. The drone-oriented, proto-glitch sound palette is shared among Antologia’s 15 tracks. The 52 serene seconds of the opening joint, “Alsee” by Nuno Canavarro, echo and twitch along as all good thorny ambient ditties should. Telectu’s tuneful “Performance #” sounds like the best On Land outtake you ever imagined. The only track with an ensemble orientation would be the Anar Band’s 1977 recording “Plasticman,” which features a ceaselessly tampered chip noise, something of a four-minute Sun Ra NES solo. Carlos Zingaro’s “#444-07” exercises percussive sample rattling (often referred to nowadays as “drilling”), a technique done to excess by Aphex Twin, Squarepusher and other you-know-whos. Two minutes into the album’s closer, “O Verão Nasceu da Paixão de 1921” by António Ferreira, one might suppose the Boards of Canada chums grew up in rural Lisbonan outskirts rather than Scottish countryside, as that recording, apparently spawned in 1988, has an uncanny connection to the blurry, reflective incantations of BoC.

Minus one or two, the tracks offered up on Antologia are cold and unmelodic. Don’t expect anything overly Eno-esque in purdiness. These pieces mandate a seasoned ear in the avant electronic paradigm. If you’ve achieved the ability to actually enjoy a Merzbow track, consider yourself in the clear. Also, if mentions of veterans like Hugh Le Caine, Paul Lansky or Iannis Xenakis ring any bells, you’re in good shape. Likewise, if you feel at home with the newer crop of fidget inducers (Oval, Greg Davis, Biosphere, etc.), you’ll likely be at home here too. Track-for-track, Antologia isn’t necessarily a pleasing, unflustered listen, but it’s routinely interesting and worthy of many a chin stroke. So if that kind of thing dollops your sundae, then giddy up.

Aside from a handful of meddled Portuguese vocal samples, no particular moment on Antologia would lead me to trace its origin to anywhere in particular. Now, I’m no Portuguese music buff (and neither are you, so don’t front), but I’ll assume these selections are indeed oddities of their region. Hell, they’d be oddities just about anywhere. (I promised I wouldn’t get all gooey with cultural analysis, so I’ll wrap this up swiftly.) They’re unlike anything I’ve heard out of the Iberian territories, and that makes my tired eardrums wobble with buoyant bliss. I have newfound reverence for the region as a viable source of Westernized infidel pop/rock poppycock. Japan has followed our lead, so let’s headlock the rest of the world into icky, delay pedal-twiddling submission. Shall we?