"Hello Beginning, This Is My Friend. . .the End" starts off Rumah Sakit's third album, {|Obscured By Clowns|}, with a building clamor akin to the first track on {|Tortoise|}'s {|Standards|} -- as if played by {|Mogwai|}. But {|Rumah Sakit|} are both less destructive and less ethereal than {|Mogwai|}, focusing on the playful, sometimes even the ironic sides, of instrumental music. {|"New Underwear Dance"|} mostly meanders happily until it breaks into a thrusting assault, and {|"No On Likes a Grumpy Cripple"|} actually travels into {|Dinosaur Jr.|} territory with crunchy, propulsive guitar madness. But while {|Obscured By Clowns|} is an intellectually stimulating {|prog|} experience, the album seems to lack the real, consistent emotive push of bands like {|Dinosaur Jr.|}, {|Mogwai|}, or {|Explosions in the Sky|}, the atmosphere of ambient outfits like {|Black Dice|}, and the utopian {|psychedelics|} of {|Tortoise|}. ~ Charles Spano