It's certainly a technique which has been employed by other musicians, but Molina is a master at it - and watching her at work is such a huge part of the fun. (Not to mention the fact that the former TV comedienne is infinitely charming and tells a good story to boot.) It's especially intriguing to witness the creation of the many separate vocal elements that find their way into her weightless melodies - a half dozen different voice-created loops in a single song isn't unusual, and onstage she pulls off this impressive feat while injecting each vocal track with its own personality. (A reflection of her acting background, perhaps?)

Similar methods were employed with the remaining components of each song: strummed guitars, synth blips and burps, woodblock percussion, each introduced into the mix gradually, incrementally, until in time the hall would be filled with lush, swelling sound. Friday's show should offer an altogether different wow-factor this time round - Molina will be joined by a full band - but the joy of beholding such complex sonic architecture in construction should be as exhilarating as ever.

Ever since first reaching the ears of the worldwide listening public with her 2003 sophomore album, Segundo (Domino) - her 1996 Argentine debut remains a tough find - Molina has been reveling in blurring the lines between what is considered electronic and what is thought to be organic sound. Yes, she plays acoustic guitar, but her music could hardly be considered folky or rootsy - and despite the designation given by some record stores, she doesn't neatly fit into the amorphous "world music" category, either. (As if singing in a language other than English automatically gains an artist possible inclusion into the catch-all "world music" genre.)

And yes, there are many strata of whirring, woozing synth textures to be found throughout her catalog, but tagging this stuff as electronic music only feels partially accurate as well. Keyboard-generated beats are largely absent; instead, she tends to form her rhythms either with cymbals and hand-held percussion or with a combination of vocal tics and hard-strummed guitar.

Once a song has reached critical mass and its myriad layered elements have all found their place in the mix, the results achieve the same rich, dense, headphone-filling goodness associated with the finest of electronica - yet this stuff comes across as more emphatically, obviously human-generated at the same time. Much of this can be attributed to Molina's distinctive voice - fluent in a wide range of birdlike coos and warbles, childlike murmurs, feline purrs and growls, and bedroom sighs, the singer might not be followed to the word by non-Spanish-speakers, but she still achieves the same emotional effect nonetheless. Given her use of multiple vocal tracks within the same song, it's not unusual for the music to trigger a few different feelings at once; focusing on one element could elicit one emotion, while listening to another could produce an altogether different sensation.

Molina's fifth and most recent disc - last year's Un Dia (Domino) - definitely wasn't a dramatic departure from previous efforts, but it did introduce one particularly eardrum-tickling development. While her voice has tended to offer most of its allure in careful understatement and soft-spoken grace, here she comes across as more confident, even indulging in some full-throated let-it-all-out from time to time. The disc opens with possibly the biggest, boldest song of her career - "Un Dia," a shouted chant over ricocheting blows of percussion and skronky sax-like synthesizer.

If that all sounds a bit too simplistic, keep in mind that this is a Juana Molina composition - and thus, the joyful noise is heightened by the ebb and flow of underpinning vocal textures, the rise and fall of electronic whizzing and whirring, the introduction and eventual removal of yet another rhythmic element. Knowing when to add and when to subtract makes all the difference - and much of the strength of Molina's music stems directly from her savvy in making such decisions.

The follow-up track, "Vive Solo," offers further illustration of Molina's innate understanding of when to build and when to take away. Starting off with gentle sighing vocals over simple guitar patterns, the song eventually introduces a slow-rolling clip-clop rhythm and cicada-like sputters of synth, along with a host of distinct vocal personalities: wraithlike howls soar and glide far overhead while several childlike murmurs scat away a disembodied-jazz melody underneath. A high-pitched, nasal whine briefly enters the picture, along with a few new vocal rumbles and mumbles - joined at last by hypnotic hand-clapped polyrhythms.

Once the handclaps come in, after nearly five minutes of build-up, it's almost expected that the new rhythm will usher in some form of explosive, boiling-over release - but instead, the song pulls back just enough to steer clear of such a bold-stroked payoff, receding slightly while still dangling the possibility of a full-blown cathartic let-go at any moment. Like much of the rest of Un Dia - and her previous work, for that matter - the song leaves the impression that it could simply go on forever, morphing from one permutation to another and on and on and on. Mercifully - as mentioned before - Molina is equally gifted at addition and subtraction, and thus could easily "flesh out" these mostly five-minutes-plus numbers into something even more expansive.

The eyebrow-raisingly titled "Los Hongos De Marosa (Marosa's Fungi)" starts off with a hypnotic circular guitar pattern and a low thumping beat (produced with a woodblock, perhaps?), which reminded me a bit of the anything-can-be-a-percussion-instrument micro-house of Matthew Herbert. Vocals are pushed to the front of the mix, sliding and diving and harmonizing with one another - sometimes cooing in near babytalk, sometimes trading "na na na"'s and "de doo de da"s, sometimes floating out in medicated exhalations. A parade of competing synth chirps and tweets join in, as do a variety of percussive twitches.

By the four-minute mark, squelchy keys threaten to engulf everything by pinging out a nervous rhythm - but soon enough, a steady clip-clop joins in, along with yet another, bubblier beat. The track pulses and pushes along with a magnetic, vital energy; despite clocking in at well beyond seven minutes, it could easily be expanded by several more without a complaint from me.

My favorite number at the moment, however, is disc closer "Dar (Que Dificil)," which opens with a nervy quick-shuffling rhythm (courtesy of strummed guitar and a bass synth throb) before lightening the mood with a bounty of playful staccato-syllable scats and the ping-pong of gongs and bells. In time, a jazzy bassline slides in, along with hip-shaking tambourine, bizarre burping synths - and is that the ever-fetching cry of a Japanese koto in the mix? Molina sounds like she's having a blast here, and I'm eager to witness her throwing herself into the happy whirlwind onstage this week.

By: Todd Lavoie