For most of its decade-long existence, Friendly Psychics Music has hidden a secret in Chris Jones, the label's co-founder, bass player, and occasional lyricist and artist.

That's changing with the inaugural releases from A Surplus of 1, Jones' first-ever solo project. The 2010 double-punch EPs Pyros and Unpunished Crimes and Compelling Regerets announce Jones as a bracing new voice on the home-recording scene.

A longtime punk and rock bassist, Jones switches gears by experimenting with the technology first introduced on Unified Alarm System's album This is Only a Test. Employing a mix of sequencers, loops, circuit-bent electronics and more, Jones invokes the best of dark '80s pop and '90s electronica with trippy, ambient numbers that balance structure and air, darkness and light.

Cinematic and pulsing, songs like "A Whistler’s German Passport" and "This Week's Featured Machine" kidnap deceptively simple chords and deposit them among layers of samples. Kraftwerk and Skinny Puppy form reference points for tracks like "Knitting With Pliers," but so does the simmering psychedelia of latter-day Flaming Lips and the heady soundtracks to A Clockwork Orange and Tron. Drooling, spark-laden robots amble out of the digital woods on the oddly comforting "Reduction Soldiers," while "Atlanta Burns at Ten" is a nightmarish decent into a pixel-drenched well.

Imagine touring a Japanese factory on acid, but instead of a human tour guide you're being shuttled through the machinery itself. It's grand and metallic, simple and warm, broken and perfect. Call it retro-futurism, techno fetishism, or post-Industrial tomfoolery. Just know that it's coming for you. And it's hungry.