With Nicholas Payton's latest effort, "sonic trance," I got my first mentally taxing test as music reporter.

How do you give a rating for lyrics when the album is almost completely devoid of them?

The album's too good to suffer an undeserved "1" for lyrics. And if I did penalize it with a low lyric rating it would be a shame because it would bring the overall rating down.

So, here's the way I look at this trumpet-heavy, 68-minute jazz album.

The lyrics, essentially, are substituted for the instruments or the sound. Payton lets his trumpet do all the talking in most of the 18 songs, although there are a couple tracks where he speaks.

"trance" starts off with the creepy, fantasy-like "praalude (sonic trance)." The phrase "sonic trance" is whispered repeatedly, which creates the illusion you are entering Payton's jazzed-up world.

The next track, "fela 1," is very interesting.

Some intellectuals tend to say music can be like sex, in that the instruments sound like they're making love. That's the case with this track. The maddening drums are pounding at a million miles per hour, your heartbeat hastens, Payton's random trumpeting gets higher- and higher-pitched to a climax, and then the song ends.

This goes on for more than seven minutes.

Payton shows his diversity and New Orleans influences with "cannabis leaf rag 1." It starts with the old ragtime music that made the style popular, and then Payton elaborates on it with his own heavy drumbeat and trumpeting.

The first third of the song is made even cooler by the sound of an old record playing in the background, which makes the jazz fan feel as if they're really in ragtime Louisiana.

If looking for variety, then it should be easy to spot in several spots on the album.

Although it gets tiring, with the same trumpeting pattern in many songs, Payton mixes it up enough to keep his audience interested.

"tantric" starts off a little boring: Trumpets, once again, are making random sounds.

But here's the difference: Payton uses a sound similar to the shattering of glass and various other eclectic sounds. "tantric" is another one of those "sex" songs I mentioned earlier, but at times its sounds register as something like an Atari game.

A piano appears on "blu hays" and belts out a catchy little tune at the song's beginning and "spiral" is just what it sounds like -?a 37-second ode to trumpeting, which sounds like it's playing out of control and about to fall into an abyss.

There are only a handful, if that, of annoying tracks on this album.

"velvet handcuffs" is one of them.

On the track, Payton's trumpet blasts away with an annoying echo effect for at least two minutes - nonstop.

He was lucky I didn't toss the CD into the wastebasket at that point. (But, for the record, I'm glad I didn't).

Equally ear-deafening sounds occur when Payton decides to grace his fans with his voice in "shabba unranked."

The lyrics cannot be understood at all because Payton growls them into the microphone. Plus, his band "plays" what sounds like a dog chew-toy in the background, which I thought was interesting, but odd.

Overall, the album is good - really good. However, there are a few tracks in the middle of the album that you might want to skip. If you don't, then you might be inclined to stop listening - and some of the best tracks await you at the end.

If you liked Nicholas Payton, check out: Louis Armstrong.

Suggested listening: When tripping out on LSD or making whoopee.