housands of words about the ecological, economical, and social friendliness of the bike can be found in the liner notes for Project Bicycle. None of these issues about travel and pollution are ever addressed in Project’s music. Not that they would have been taken seriously. The cover art features high school binder doodlings of mutants with cloudheads and flies buzzing around them—art best suited for the urine-dampened walls of a punk dive’s restroom than classrooms and cafeterias. But the music’s concept and execution are admirable and ridiculously entertaining. The Vancouver-based Ache label challenged 11 post-techno noiseniks and scallywags to remix the same sample of bicycle noises. Jesse Gander performed and recorded what so many kids and avant-gardists have done with bikes for decades: turn their pedals backwards to get that rackety grind, pound out a lopsided rhythm on the spokes with drumsticks, smack a few spokes to get a richer gong noise, and then ring the damn bell. Gander also has a robot shout “Bicycle!” at the end.

Most of the artists either explore the gamelan-like tones of the bike’s spokes or use the gear grindings as part of their recordings of extraterrestrial life. Belgian man-child Uské Niko puts the bell sample in his mouth and chews it to great irritation in “Les Klaxons de Madame Dupont,” while Jason Forrest’s “Breaking Away” teaches the young ignoramuses about prog’s days in Camelot when he lets duel guitar solos and arena chants of “Go bike go!” interrupt an otherwise tepid rhythm of spinning gears and hardcore techno beats. Many other artists indulge in their usual shtick. Aelters sets a Gameboy disco groove to the ka-thunking rhythm of a leaking tire in “Roulé Brouillé,” while Sun OK Papi K.O. mutates the spokes into an intoxicating and unruly noisecore jaunt in “Pizza Boy’s Bike.”

The meditative tracks shine brightest, though. TU M’ loops the deep drones that vibrated from the bike’s steel and travels through outer space in “Ladri Di Biciclette,” and Wobbly cycles across the bottom of an ocean trench in “Flee You.” The record’s centerpiece is Romanhead’s enchanting epic, “Bicycle Work,” where a Mouse on Martian bell melody looms over a sparse rhythm that clacks like rocks breaking in a quarry. Unfortunately, a cloud of scrambled microtones spoils the track’s flow and makes the previous majestic aura seem like a mere daydream.

Project’s best moment is its simplest. New England digital folkie Greg Davis is the only artist who respects the bike as a vehicle. On “Sagres (v.6),” he records himself riding a bike and the birds, breezes, and joggers passing by. Yet, there is something living and snarling in his basket; a CB radio-like machine spits out static throughout the trip and builds a tension that never releases. Davis makes the bike a means to adventure—the type of adventure that is rarely heard through the muted world of a car window.