Last week a friend of mine complained about a performance of "laptop music" he saw recently. "If I wanted to elbow through a crowd just to watch someone sit behind their Powerbook," he snarled, "then I could just go to my office -- and it's not as smoky." He's got a point, but computer-generated music obviously can't be summed up that easily, especially when it is evolving in so many directions. Three Japanese artists have recently garnered attention for pushing the data-DJ medium forward, in both their live sets and a collaborative studio project -- their first as a trio.

It's been called folktronica, acoustica and laptop-folk, but Aoki Takamasa, Ogurusu Norihide and Takagi Masakatsu seem wary of classifying "Come and Play in Our Backyard," released on Beams Records. One reason may be that this album differs from each of the Kansai denizens' other projects. Aoki punches out organic club-beats in Japan and Europe, while Ogurusu records ambient minimalism for both New York's Carpark Records and Tokyo's P-Vine. Takagi is also a visual artist whose music often accompanies his video installations.

Silicom, a project he and Aoki undertook for Tokyo's Progressive Form label, used similar ideas, blending computer-based music with digital images.