Don't try to argue with Costanza about New York political issues. The Italian trip-hop chemist only set up her Brooklyn studio two years ago, but already she's got an opinion on everything from illegal immigration to Arab-American relations to police brutality ("50 Bullets Fired in Queens" is a memorial to shooting victim Sean Bell). Sonic Diary is her first full-length album after cutting her teeth as Tricky's featured vocalist on 2003's Vulnerable and her own 2006 EP Zerokilled.

 

Sonic Diary, which features two tracks from the earlier EP and dance-y, unrecognizable but surprisingly lovely covers of Fugazi and Johnny Cash, ends up reading more like that of a hot-blooded revolutionary than a lovelorn teenage girl. On "Just another Alien," Costanza recites the questions on the forms given to newly-arriving immigrants: "Have you ever been a prostitute...have you ever been a drug abuser or an addict…have you ever been a human being?" an escalating rage in her accented English.

Make no mistake – Costanza is a firm devotee of the atmospheric, and her voice, not to mention her tempo, hardly rises anywhere else. But "In the Sun" and "Babilon Dream" have lots to recommend them, including pretty xylophone hooks and in the latter case, strings, which unwrap like a birthday present at the end of the track. Her collaboration with Italian superstar Rino Gaetano and composer Ricardo Sinigallia makes merry with woodwinds to weave a medieval tapestry. Speaking of classical techniques, the 14-minute long opus "Coming Home" (written for the upcoming Kim Basinger thriller While She Was Out) has movements ranging from runway-style beats to arrhythmic beeping to fluid, wavering synth.

- Claire Shefchik