They carry battery-powered samplers and minidisc recorders in tattered suitcases on New York subways, recording whatever comes their way. They capture odd bits of audio detritus, tucking them into rock music beds to make songs about superstitious lotto players. They're Enon [ tickets ]--pronounced Ee-nin and named for a rural town near Dayton, OH--a new band comprised of ex-Brainiac John Schmersal and Skeleton Key members Rick Lee and Steve Calhoon.

On March 14, Enon will release ''Believo!'' (SeeThru Broadcasting), a disc that open-minded rock listeners may find different. The cryptic songs use pop melodies, but they're more off-kilter than those of Guided By Voices (a Dayton-born band like Brainiac).

The song forms have richer structures than two-guitar indie rock, because each one is collaged together out of overdubbed voices, live ''junk'' percussion performances, smashing bottles, running movie projectors, decontextualized sounds and a judicious heavy guitar riff or two--enough to put the band on the rock map, as over-populated at it is. Every cut has its own musical premise (a concept used by Tom Waits and by the Latin Playboys) indicating that Enon might be on to something big, though they're not trying to design a sound.

''The things that I end up liking the most, and the things that usually end up having the most lasting value ... are the things that just happen,'' Schmersal said about his freak falsetto soul vocal on ''Rubber Car,'' the album's opener. ''The less I think about them, the better they are, the more spontaneous they are.''

Before Enon, 27-year old Schmersal played guitar with Brainiac--labeled as ''space rock'' and ''sci-fi rock''--until songwriter/moog player Tim Taylor was killed in car crash in 1997. Band-less and car-less, Schmersal left Dayton for a five-room crash pad in an old Masonic Temple in Kentucky. The 30-foot ceilings, the natural reverb, and his curiosity with the temple led him to start recording songs as therapy. While he never intended it to be a record, he released the home-made, acoustic instrument album as ''Forget Everything,'' made under the name of philosopher John Stuart Mill.

Schmersal eventually moved to New York, playing separately with keyboard/sampler sound purveyor Lee and pots-and-pans percussionist Calhoon, then forming a band with them. Both Schmersal and Lee provided the germs of songs on ''Believo!'' which Schmersal said turned into a more collaborative project than Brainiac, in which the late Taylor had final say, serving as the group's ''aesthetic conscience.''

As the first one to carry a suitcase containing a sampler and a recorder, Lee catalyzed the group's spontaneous, sound collecting methods, Schmersal said. Carrying a suitcase is now a requirement of band membership, and Schmersal is working on percussionist Calhoon to get him to quit hauling around his 50-pound propane tanks and use drum pads with samples instead. But Schmersal's main interest in samples isn't only economy. He catalogues them, saves them for future use, detunes and changes them by playing them over keyboards. It's a long way off from three people in a garage with guitars and drums.

The immediate future of Enon is a tour with Delta 72, going as far as South By Southwest, then playing some dates with Girls Against Boys. Schmersal wants to firm up the band's rapport, get some live experience under his belt, then release some new singles.

''By the time a band is allowed to put out a record,'' he said, ''usually the band has already thrown out all the material that they consider to be questionable. And then they've written other [new] songs. [The first album] is basically the best of their best.... By the time they do the second record, usually the band doesn't even have time to catch up. All of a sudden they go out on tour. All of a sudden they want a second record, and the band doesn't have any idea what to do. I'm not really worried about that. Honestly, I just want to play shows, which is what touring is all about, and become more of a band, get more of a feeling about what everyone [in the band] is all about.''