STEVE EARLE I Feel Alright E2/Warner Bros. FOR A WHILE there, following Steve Earle's trail was downright painful, as he bottomed out with a thoroughness unusual even in country music. After kicking his heroin habit and finishing a stint in prison, Earle returned with last year's wonderful acoustic album, Train A Comin'. And now he's really back, reclaiming the country-rock turf he staked out so confidently with Guitar Town and Exit 0 in the mid-'80s. This is some of the best music of Earl's career--full of depth and maturity, along with the old swagger and recklessness. The 12 songs, all written by Earle, have an irresistible emotional resonance. The insightful "Valentine's Day" and "Hurtin' Me, Hurtin' You" capture all of love's warmth, contradictions and pain, as does "You're Still Standing There," a duet with Lucinda Williams that closes the album. -- Pam Parrish MAGNOG Magnog Kranky MY THEORY AND welcome to it: that there's a sonic astral plane where at various times musicians tune in, commune on a subconscious level, and eventually arrive at a musical consensus. Most recently, outfits from all corners of the globe have opted for what is termed, variously, "space rock," "ambient psychedelia," and just plain "headfuck." Seattle's Magnog joins contemporaries like Flying Saucer Attack and Cul de Sac in a celebration of things past ('70s Krautrockers, early Pink Floyd, Spacemen 3) without getting bogged down in structural formalities. Thus, a 12-minute excursion like "Relay" simultaneously charts forward upon rolling waves of echoey percussion and massive slabs of feedback/wah-wah guitar while shifting through vertical layers of discernible textures, hues, and (most essentially) emotions. This is intense, soulful, cinematic instrumental music that sweeps you up and carries you to dimensions you've only dreamed of visiting. --Fred Mills Christy Doran, Fredy Studer, Phil Minton, Django Bates and Amin Ali Play The Music Of Jimi Hendrix Intuition AT LAST COUNT, there were seven or eight hundred Hendrix tribute albums available. The axe god definitely merits the attention, but the tributes thus far tend to only mimic him--which, granted, remains no easy feat. This quintet of European jazzers, however, offer the least predictable elegy to date. "Manic Depression" sounds like Richard Thompson one minute and Robert Plant the next (as accurate a personification of depression and mania as rock music offers, if you think about it). "Purple Haze" turns the signature beat into a creepy pulse behind a skittish jazz piano. Jimi's two-minute tunes are reshaped into improvisations four or five times their original length, so heavily altered as to initiate him into the halls of jazzdom. Hendrix freaks will discover their hero's music was intentionally turned on its side, and approached with the same level of creativity the Lord of Lighter Fluid Himself used. --Dave McElfresh

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