I’ve yet to enjoy Anthony Cuccia’s jazzy, experimental Other Planets as much live as on this, their excellent first album. Live, the band sounds talented, but not as engaging, unique or focused as here. The electronics are now clear and prevalent: squishy percussion, blips and blurps bubble up from every crevice and the band’s modernity is finally, deliciously apparent. For every intricate composition of bass, guitar, drums, sax and Matt McClimon’s killer vibraphone, there’s a foil like Dr. Jimbo Walsh’s “Walking Porno Zombie,” a straight electro track which features no live instrumentation—or seems not to; the mystery of the sounds keeps the album fascinating. Though the band would benefit from the disappearance of Cuccia’s quirky, satiric Frank Zappa vocals—the album’s lead track “Will You Adhere?” is unfortunately the weakest—luckily, the album’s very few bad moments end soon enough as Other Planets jump into the next thing, without ever feeling skittish or contrived. Because all the songs are surprisingly short and to-the-point—a concentration of the band’s power—Discreet Manipulations feels more like an actual album than a simple recording of a band. From every angle, Other Planets got their dynamic perfect; love or hate the vocals, they’re a needed break after a hearty helping of instrumentals. And though the nasal, white boy rap cadence of “Hector Detector” is nearly intolerable, Cuccia makes an insightful statement: “The Dragon’s Den has got some fuckin excellent players/but play a million notes and everybody just stares.” Meaning (perhaps inadvertently) that you can be a really great player and still be boring as fuck. Adept New Orleans musicians like Cuccia and crew often don’t realize that it takes something more—a something Other Planets have definitely proven they possess.