"Steve Vai" just keeps kicking out those strange and wonderful albums. His latest, "The Ultra Zone," is another great disc from the Frank Zappa sidekick, and that master's penchant for musical experimentation definitely shows through pm "The Ultra Zone's" tracks. So, too, do the phenomenal guitar skills posessed by Vai. This latest trip through his mind may not quite live up to his best work, which include the classic "Passion And Warfare" and "Fire Garden" (my pick for best album of 1996), but it's definitely worth checking out.

The funny thing is, Vai didn't really intend to release an album in 1999. Apparently, while working on a 10 CD (MegaVai?) box set, he found enough cool material lying around to make it worth treating his fans to a full album.

The good stuff begins with the opening track, "The Blood And Tears." Officially an instrumental, it features a continuously playing background sample of Hindu philosophy, religious chanting in Sanskrit and a "chorus" of Indian singing. The first time I heard it, I thought I'd grabbed one of my parent's CDs by mistake. The ethnic touches are apparent on a number of tracks on "The Ultra Zone," with the title track offering hints of the Caribbean.

Zappa's spirit shines through most on two tracks. The first of these, entitled "Lucky Charms," opens on a perky, helium-influenced mode before going on to feature synth horn-enhanced "call and response" passages. With a little shredding here, a touch of light jazz there, and a fake bagpipe thrown in for good measure, the song really takes listeners for a spin. The other track is entitled, "Frank." It's not the only obviously intended tribute to a deceased musical giant. "Jibboom" shows what "Stevie Ray Vaughn" might have turned out like if he'd had a little shred guitar mixed in with his diet of the blues. Sparked on by his wife Pia's exclamations of "Just go for it!" Vai really has fun with this track.

Of course, "Jibboom" is just prologue for the next piece of bizarre fun, "Voodoo Acid." The weirdest, and my favorite track on the disc, it's also the first on "The Ultra Zone" to feature Vai's vocal talents. He gets to sing about a ridiculous drug trip, and manages to sneak in references to his bee-keeping hobby, when the protagonist meets up with a queen bee (she and her swarm sound amazingly like an Alvin and the Chipmunks record played at the wrong speed). The trip ended when, "I lay there swimming in a pool of scum and smut/ That my ego threw up."

The best thing about Vai is that adventurous musical nature. He's not afraid of creating fantastic and bizarre pictures with his instruments. It might not make for the tightest songwriting, but with a Vai disc, half the fun is in not knowing what you're going to get the first time you spin it. There are a few songs that, with proper marketing, could easily make a splash on the radio. Case in point, the beautiful ballad "I'll Be Around." Other tracks go back to his roots, showing off the virtuosic guitar skills that put him on tour with Eric Johnson and Joe Satriani a couple of years ago.

Then there's the album closer, "Asian Sky," which starts out sounding like an '80s pop song, reminiscent of perhaps Duran Duran. Vai is the vocalist at the beginning of the track, but he gives way to Koshi Inaba about two minutes into the song. Due to the way they handled the transition - smoothly, no obvious break in the music - I didn't even notice it until I tried to make out the lyrics and figured out that the vocalist wasn't singing in English anymore. The '80s pop also gives way, in turn, to a similarly upbeat, speaker-switching solo from Vai, before a layered vocal chorus (with an accompaniment of synthesized Japanese windchimes!) bring the song to a close.

I said it earlier, this isn't the best Vai has ever done, but it doesn't really matter. His stuff is so cool to listen to, you just need to sit back and enjoy the ride.