MERRI CYR PHOTO Tin Hat Trio cooks up exotic sounds with a wide array of acoustic instruments.

Even for All Things Considered junkies, it's clear that NPR's music criticism is about as edgy as a damp biscuit. But recently the radio network got it very right when it explored the uncategorizable acoustic music of Tin Hat Trio.

That NPR feature underscored just how strange a creature the trio's music really is. You might say Tin Hat Trio sends the rodeo clown out into the rain with a wire umbrella -- that is, genres and sounds collide in unlikely combinations, but it all adds up to a gloriously strange whole that defies description. If ever a surreal dream called for a music ensemble, this lot would be the best choice to come trundling by in the nearest rumbleseat.

It's hard to adequately prepare the unititiated for the otherworldly effect of Tin Hat Trio's mostly instrumental acoustic chamber/jazz/tango/whatever music. On its Sept. 2002 release, The Rodeo Eroded, the trio employs its trademark moves -- one instant the music is a smooth groove with sharp-edged improvisational melody on top, and the next it's tight bursts of off-kilter rhythm that seem ready to crumble into chaos, but never actually do. There's a slight nod in the direction of Americana music, plus a guest vocal on "Willow Weep for Me" by Willie Nelson. As seems always true of the band, there is a hard-to-get-at, captivating melancholy throughout.

The album combines the sensibilities of the Star Wars cantina band with the drama of tango master Astor Piazzolla, the slur of Delta blues and the brio of the Old World. It's the ultimate soundtrack for daring Niagara Falls in a barrel.

And in the face of all that grandiose critical wordsmithing, the trio's fretted-instrument maestro (guitar, dobro, banjo and cavaquinho) Mark Orton takes the kind of view that makes the band's high-wire act possible. He explained in a recent interview that his favorite reaction is "the random woman or man who comes up after the show and says 'that was great -- what do you call that?' For us it's just music."

Tin Hat's music is both an intuitive adventure and a pre-booked holiday, thanks to the classical training and improvisational savvy of all three members.

The trio's training does not confine them to just an occasional outré jag within an otherwise staid world; unlike many classical musicians, they are excellent improvisers. Guitarist Mark Orton went to elementary school with accordionist Rob Burger (also on organs, piano and most anything with a keyboard), and violinist/violist/vocalist Carla Kihlstedt met Orton at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. Burger, meanwhile, attended UMass Amherst. (Orton has also been a resident of the Valley, haunting both Sunderland and Amherst).

The three friends headed for the West Coast together after college in the early '90s, and it was on that long trek that they started playing together. At the other end of the trip, Orton's grandmother's hacienda in California provided some R&R plus a perfect venue for continuing the musical collaboration. "In fact," Orton said, "'The Rodeo Eroded' was [the title of] a poem about that place."

All three musicians have shown up in impressive places. Orton was the chief engineer at New York's Knitting Factory, where he worked with folks like Laurie Anderson, the Kronos Quartet and John Zorn. His engineering expertise found him touring with Mr. Bungle, Bill Frisell and John Lurie and the Lounge Lizards. Burger recorded the soundtrack to Gary Larson's "Tales from the Far Side" TV show with Bill Frisell. Kihlstedt is quite present in contemporary classical music (she was recently a featured soloist at the Phillip Glass-produced MATA Festival), and has played on albums by Eugene Chadbourne and Tom Waits, among others.

In 1999, they released their first album, Memory is an Elephant, a sort of Big Top chamber music extravaganza, more playful than wistful. The critics began the verbal back-flips in earnest.

Helium followed in 2000. It's hard to overpraise this album. In an era when many a well-meaning folkie offers up mediocre poetry set to two chords, Helium sets the bar so high for acoustic music that it's unlikely to be matched any time soon. Vertiginous keening pines from the violin, the accordion swirls in Old World abandon and the guitar provides a sophisticated rhythmic/melodic underpinning, neither pure rhythm nor lead.

The entire disc is instrumental save the last song, when Tom Waits shows up for a guest vocal. No matter what weird move the trio makes, it just seems right -- when an ascending melody full of 'wrong' notes comes flying out of nowhere in an otherwise subtle moment, it becomes hard to imagine that the song could have continued without it.

All that gamboling hither and yon makes sense when Orton discusses the band's composing process. Though Orton has the lion's share of composing credits on The Rodeo Eroded, all three members write. Orton explains that their compositions take shape in many different ways, from a totally premeditated combining of elements to a free-form improv that becomes a permanent framework for a song.

"It's important to us that the improv maintains a compositional element," said Orton. "In jazz, you've got the head [the main melodic line] and you improvise off that. [Tin Hat Trio] is not like that." For them, it's more about larger-scale issues like feel, pulse and harmony.

Orton further explained that "compositional" approach to improv by pointing out what's possible with bandmates whose playing is a familiar quantity. If he decides to go from a Latin feel to the blues, the other two catch it and stick right with him. A listener might well chalk that kind of move up to clever arrangement, and not even realize it's improvised.

"I'm not gonna say that we set out to do that," said Orton, "but truthfully, the music that we're interested in often does blur that line." And Orton and his cohorts seem interested in every kind of music on the planet, whether it's Albanian pop or rarefied chamber music.

The group plays mostly instruments whose ranges and timbres overlap. While that may seem fraught with the dangers of the musicians constantly stepping on each other's toes, players with such broad palettes and instrumental mastery can make it work beautifully.

The three avoid confusion, said Orton, "by really using our ears -- similar timbres mean working on blending them and working toward breaking out of their idiomatic sounds. It's not something that we're even conscious of anymore." The usual combo of bass-and-drums groove with melody on top doesn't apply here, says Orton. "It's actually a slight advantage over a bass-and-drums laden group -- because there's not that locked-in idea; it's freer."

In the next year, Tin Hat Trio plans to record a live album as a trio, and also record as a quintet with Bryan Smith of Deep Banana Blackout on tuba and Zeena Parkins (who's played with Björk) on harp. On Feb. 22, they return to the Valley for a gig at Club Helsinki in Great Barrington.

James Heflin can be reached at jheflin@valleyadvocate.com.