THE ART OF NOISE

Guitarist Chris Whitley had a problem. The reviews for his debut, 1991's Living With the Law, glowed a little too brightly. ''Riveting and original,'' raved Rolling Stone. ''Whitley mines roots music not as an imitator but as a visionary.'' The plaudits were well earned; Living's Robert Johnson-inspired guitar and smoky vocals were a strikingly original approach to an often tired genre.

Trouble was, it wasn't the record he wanted to make. ''It was frustrating being put into the singer-songwriter thing,'' Whitley says. ''[That label] seems kinda precious to me.'' Nevertheless, he had no choice at the time. Whitley, 35, had been working days in a Brooklyn picture-framing factory and playing solo acoustic gigs. While playing in a downtown New York club in 1990, the blond-tressed guitarist met Grammy-winning producer Daniel Lanois (U2, Bob Dylan), who helped him land a deal with Columbia Records. When he toured in support of the resulting low-key album, Whitley, perhaps perversely, chose to crank the volume as frontman of a rockin' power trio. ''I probably shouldn't say this,'' he laughs sheepishly, ''but my rock references were things I grew up with, like Cream, Mountain, and the Doors -- far more than Robert Johnson.''

Whitley's love of volume is evident on his sophomore release, Din of Ecstasy, an interesting marriage of high-wattage guitars, Eastern melodies, and strangely poetic, Hendrix-like lyrics. ''My whole life is about change,'' explains Whitley, who was born in Houston and has lived in Oklahoma, Connecticut, Mexico, and Vermont. ''But I didn't realize how different [this album]sounded to people.''

There's another reason for Whitley's shift in style. ''It's post-Nirvana,'' he says. ''The climate of the last five years has encouraged me to pick songs with a rock approach. I started thinking, 'Wow, people might be open to this now!''' In any case, Whitley has no intentions of returning to balladeer mode. ''Now,'' he exclaims, ''I can make some noise!''