You should love circus music. Not only is it strongly associated with clowns, monkeys and bearded women, it's a surprisingly resilient genre. No matter what The Beat Circus do to their bombastic big top compositions, no matter how they contort them, they always return to the propulsive one-two beat, the careening horns and the gorgeous accordion. Ringmaster's Revolt has many of the trappings of a smartass novelty album, but even at its most aggressively modernist, it remains a love song to a genre that just doesn't get enough credit. So yes, to answer your question, it really, truly is circus music -- but really daring, exciting circus music.

The opening overture, titled "Overture" for clarity, dedicates itself to establishing this point. "No," it says, "this is not a joke." An audience applauds at the end, just in case you missed the idea. Then, with the next track, "Mandalay's Song", the fun really begins. Here a relatively standard (but in no way stale) composition leads to demented jazz thrills and pure banjo insanity. However, it takes the positively unhinged "Big Top Suite Pat 1: March of the Elephants" to demonstrate just what this ensemble is capable of: it's a drastic, ludicrous reinterpretation of Rogers and Hammerstein's "The Lonely Goat Herd". You know, that song that plays during that inexplicably elaborate puppet show in The Sound of Music. Again, it seems like a joke at the outset, but Rogers and Hammerstein are a couple of the most enduring names in theatre for a reason. The song, as you may recall, was actually quite addictive, and given the Beat Circus treatment, it gains new life. Along with the original insidious melodic hook, you get a banjo that is positively liquid. This revision is so spot-on that it will irrevocably alter the tune itself for you: you won't be able to hear the original without hearing this one in the back of your head.

"Big Top Suite Part 2: Clowns" co-opts the teetering horns we associate with a trapeze act and marries them to jazz. Here we also have an easy path to appreciating the subtle genius that puts composer Brian Carpenter's seemingly excessive work into such perfect balance. If you listen closely to the beat, you'll notice it changes quite regularly. Perfectly sustaining whatever rhythm it happens to have settled on for the moment, commanding the entire low end, this drum feels like the only trustworthy element in the entire song -- yet it, too, changes. The elements are constantly shifting, at once enhancing the feeling of mania and keeping it in check. "The Contortionist Tango" is a bit more reliable; naturally, it marries tango to circus music and the resulting romance is damn hot, building slowly to a head, then descending into eerie, ambient accordion and electronic weirdness. Then it all builds back up into something that, while it certainly bears a resemblance to what we heard a minute ago, is far more overtly evil.

"The Mack", with its Betty Boop jazz trappings -- especially a ridiculously cartoonish horn near the end, which could also be a human voice run through a filter, for all we know -- will make you wonder whether you're supposed to be dancing, or marching, or both. Whichever it is, you'd better be waving one finger around in those old-timey circles.

After "Escape from the Big House", a largely spoken-word affair with a side-order of especially sinister music, the album spins out of control, falls apart, and also explodes. We've been warned until now via little interludes -- single-minute blocks of sonic chaos -- but these were always offset by explicitly traditional big top meanderings, complete with audience feedback. Now form has been all but abandoned and the modernist leanings are right out there in the open like a freak show, ready for you to gawk at. "Die by the Sword" is totally effective in this regard, remaining coherent against all odds. It perfectly melds the tension, the dissonance, the power of modern weirdness with the inspiration behind Ringmaster's Revolt.

That brings us to the rather underwhelming title track. The mess that eventually develops over five and a half minutes is a fascinating one, but it's not really up to the standard set by the rest of the record. You get the idea that this is supposed to be total collapse; it never really gets off the ground, but The Beat Circus deserve our forgiveness in that regard. Making an entire album of brilliant circus music, demonstrating the power, the flexibility, the sheer awesomeness of good circus music, is an act of minor genius. When all's said and done, you're just going to want more.