Alias’ Fever Dream hits you like a stab and then a surge of something heavy and thick in your veins. Track by track, Brendon Whitney’s trip-hop makes murky your blood. It seizes your brain and you’re conscious of being enraptured in its pulsating rhythm of rainbow hues. While 2008’s Resurgam featured actual instruments, this time the sounds that you hear are all samples. Whitney’s baritone grumblings slide under sparkling zips, zaps and huge echoes on “Goinswimmin,” while his high layered vocals tremble and shimmer on “Talk in Technicolor.” And “Dahorses” is amazingly upbeat with whistles and kicking percussion. Far from being simply an aimless but beautiful drive through delirium, Fever Dream sounds like it knows where this trip is going. Each song is crafted around a stable core that keeps it from being too abstract. As interesting a piece of art as it is, Fever Dream isn’t a complex thing that you appreciate and analyze in your head – it’s wam and lively and engaging for your whole person. (Anticon, www.anticon.com) Adrienne Yeung