NORTHAMPTON, Mass. -- DJ Spooky was surrounded by sensory stimuli of various shapes and kinds.

The man was in his element.

"This is what Riddim Warfare is all about," DJ Spooky said over the din of turntable scratches and live drumming from a stage drenched in flickering lights, while projected television and movie images moved in a collage behind him.

Although Spooky was talking about his newly released, experimental hip-hop album, he may as well have been talking about his entire aesthetic.

"I'm talking about psychology, remixology. This is DJ culture and this is the future," said the boyish-looking DJ, who was clad in a hooded sweatshirt and white fishing-hat during his performance Wednesday at Pearl Street.

Performing with an MC, another DJ, a drummer and a keyboardist -- all of varying nationalities -- DJ Spooky delivered a night of cultural, visual and sonic collage, which included performances by Mexican rap-rock fusionists Plastilina Mosh and sound/video collage artists Emergency Broadcast Network.

As audience-members drifted in, they were treated to the sights and sounds of EBN, who bathed the crowd in a rapid-fire series of collage images taken from television commercials, movies and music videos and projected on two screens behind the stage. That music videos were featured prominently in their spectacle was unsurprising, since EBN's most recent gig was creating visual pastiches for each category in this year's MTV Video Music Awards.

EBN's visual collages provided a unifying thread that ran through all of the performances.

Plastilina Mosh offered a dizzying mix of rock, rap and lounge music with politically charged lyrics, pulling freely from their Capitol debut, Aquamosh. Jonas -- the raspy-voiced Plastilina Mosh frontman -- sang "Pornoshop," "Nino Bomba" (RealAudio excerpt) and "Monster Truck" with playful enthusiasm and energy, while an array of images served as disorienting counterpoint.

After a brief musical and visual interlude provided by EBN, DJ Spooky took the stage. Rather than taking a position behind the turntable decks, he picked up an upright electric bass. It was the first indication he'd be spending a surprisingly small part of the concert manning the turntables.

Spooky was quickly joined by an international group of musicians that included Israeli keyboardist Dan Yashiv, a Swiss drummer named Jojo, the Harlem-based MC Skamp and DJ Wiz, a member of the Steelworkers-battle DJ crew.

Launching into an extended jam session -- which was alternately dance- and concentration-inducing -- Spooky and company dropped in sonic fragments from his two full-length albums, Riddim Warfare and his earlier Songs of a Dead Dreamer. It wasn't until halfway through the set, when Spooky performed "Object Unknown" from Riddim Warfare, that he finally played a fully recognizable song from his album.

But it had one crucial difference. Rather than offering the avant-mind-funk stylings of Kool Keith, who handled vocals on the album version, DJ Spooky stepped out from behind his turntables and dropped some rhymes with MC Skamp.

In addition to the sonic collage, Spooky's set was enhanced by visuals projected behind Spooky and the band -- visuals created by Spooky and EBN's Gardner Post. The images, which at times flowed almost perfectly in synch with the music, provided a trance-inducing spectacle completely in keeping with the experimental music and Spooky's "collage culture" aesthetic.

After one number, Spooky gleefully announced, "That included sounds from my neighborhood, [the Beatles'] 'Revolution #9' and John Cage's 'Imaginary Landscapes,' " referring, respectively, to the Beatles' collage track from their 1968 White Album and to the avant-garde composer of "Silence."

"That was 40 years of sound-collage distilled in five minutes," he added.

After a five-minute solo-bass "recital," as Spooky sarcastically called it, he was joined for an uptempo encore that included freestyles from MC Skamp and Plastilina Mosh's Jonas, as well as the rhythmic bass-playing of Spooky himself.

"That sh-- was ill! I can't believe what I just heard," said a smiling Matt Richman, 19.

Even more excited was a dazed-looking Post from EBN, who ran up to Spooky backstage and embraced him, shouting, "That was f---ing amazing!"