Lansing-Dreiden enters 2006 with the Dividing island, an album that realizes the company"s potential in new, transcendent ways. Many of the album"s songs weave disparate musical elements into intensely familiar yet uncategorizable wholes. The modern mixes with the archaic, the known with the unknown. On "Free For All" a traditional pop/R & B song is layered with darker sounds, alien to that genre, ominous chords, ghostly harmonies, and a recording drum sample evoking the sound of gunfire, " Dethroning The Optimyth" tempers a power-metal assault with angelic vocals. Elsewhere, jangly guitar hooks are sourced by dissonant keyboard swells; electronic cadences rattle along beside acoustic drum breaks; vocals sour, warm and emotive yet mysteriously veiled. Culling irresistible sounds from rock, pop, R & B, soul, metal and beyond.