The Sea and Cake's Sam Prekop said he knows Two Gentlemen isn't like any of the band's other albums by a long shot, but then that's the idea.

"EP's, since they're shorter, tend to be more open-ended," said Prekop, of the new five-song EP, which reworks a number of older songs in unexpected ways. "That's what I like about them, they're sort of like small arenas for experimentation."

Fronted by Prekop (ex-Shrimp Boat), and featuring Tortoise's John McEntire, bassist Eric Claridge and Archer Prewitt (ex-Coctails), the band has kept journalists and audiences alike off-balance with four albums of beautifully- constructed ambient sound pillows that evoke the excesses of King Crimson and the deep recesses of German experimentalists Can, often in the same breath.

Gone, for the moment, anyway, are the dueling, multi-layered acoustic guitars and drums, the half-whispered, elliptical lyrics and meandering melotrons usually associated with the band. In are break beats, scratching, big rock drums and ancient drum machine and sequencer drones.

The EP features remixes by Directions in Music's Bundy K. Brown (ex-Tortoise), Chicago producer and jungle DJ Casey Rice (a.k.a. Designer), Chicago avant guitar legend and ex-Gastr Del Sol leader Jim O'Rourke and two new songs by Prekop, "Early Chicago" (RealAudio excerpt) and "The Sewing Machine." What you likely won't recognize is the source material from which the songs, all of which bear oddball titles provided by the remixers, are derived.

Prekop said the band just handed over the tapes of the songs to the remixers with no instructions and no parameters. Brown's effort, "The Cheech Wizard Meets Baby Ultraman in the Cool Blue Cave (Short Stories About Birds, Trees and Other Sports Life Wherever You Are)," uses elements of several songs, including the bass lines from "Sporting Life" and "Bird and Flag," both on the band's previous album, The Fawn, released earlier this year. The track, a swirling mix of wah-wah guitars, keyboards and spectral ambient tones, makes use of the "spirit, vibe and beats" of The Fawn's "There You Are," a sample from a radio promo album and some DJ scratching based on the source album's grooves. "He exposed things and buried other things to different degrees," said Prekop.

Brown said he took what he needed from the band's music and cut it up into the "smallest pieces I could work with," while still maintaining the character of what a The Sea and Cake record is. "I picked that radio spot," said Brown, not wanting to reveal the source, "because I thought it was making a statement that was pertinent to the change of direction The Sea and Cake were going through."

Bundy said with the exception of the radio bit, which speaks to the "evolution of sound" and the use of electronics, all the samples and drum loops he used were lifted directly from The Fawn, then radically retrofitted.

On O'Rourke's "I Took the Opportunity To Antique My End Table," Prekop said the guitarist "just re-arranged us," by placing McEntire's drums in a different place, adding in crowd noise and using Prekop's scratch vocals. The result is a track that opens with McEntire beating the drums in a rockist fashion, as if warming up for a mid-show drum solo, and then segues into a more mellow acoustic guitar lament.

The soft-spoken Prekop rounds out the half-hour effort with two new songs, "Early Chicago" and "The Sewing Machine," both droney, ambient slivers of sound created on some ancient equipment he lucked into before the band embarked on a recent European tour. "I'd just gotten an old drum machine and a very antique sequencer, where you actually have to push buttons," said Prekop, who used the machines to weave a pair of skittering, trance-style instrumentals.

As for why he left out his trademark breathy vocals, Prekop said he would have added some, if he'd had a microphone at that time. "I would have played guitar too, but I was more interested in limitations, and I wasn't really set up to record vocals at home."

Despite the exciting, and sometimes liberating, feel of the EP, Prekop said he doubts the next The Sea and Cake album will have the same mixed-up feel. "Some ideas might bleed over," he said, "but I personally wouldn't want it to seem like a remixed album. I'm interested in that process, but I think our best stuff incorporates singing and song-based ideas and have a more complete feel to them." [Fri., Oct. 10, 1997, 9 a.m. PDT]