Justin Mikulka, Sky Cries Mary, The Sensualists, David Demnitz and Gamelan Son of Lion
Saturnine, Fredrik Ness Sevendal, Hot Buttered Elves, NATAS
Port Vale, Wende Bartley, Pole, SOS
Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, Spoon, The Timeout Drawer, Weird Uncle Betty
Les Rythmes Digitales, Überhund

	Justin Mikulka / Sequels and Opposites / One Mad Son (CD) Sample 30 seconds of "High Horse Rider" We reviewed Mikulka's previous solo effort, Consumed, a few months ago, and it's a pleasant surprise to hear how much Sequels and Opposites advances his style. Consumed's sound -- "one man, his guitar and his angst" -- was unrelenting and unvaried. Sequels and Opposites adds more instrumentation, some sound effects, backing vocals and a distinct change of mood. Mikulka is faithful to his spare folk-rock sound, but filters it through a raw, white-hot country-blues aesthetic; basically, if you like the new Johnny Dowd album, you'll love this. A quick skim of the lyrics reveals that Mikulka's gaining ground as a storyteller, too. Just as grim as Consumed but a lot more palatable, Sequels and Opposites is a massive jump forward for Justin Mikulka. It deserves your attention...but if you don't find it, don't be surprised if it finds you. -- gz
	Sky Cries Mary / Seeds / Collective Fruit (CD) Sample 30 seconds of "Chickaboom Cocktail" This 4-song EP (which also includes an MPEG video of "Chickaboom Cocktail") finds the band in a vibrant, playful mood. Although Seeds is Sky Cries Mary's first release in almost three years, it's clear that they haven't just been sitting around in their underwear watching The Jeffersons and drinking tab -- unless they have that rare body chemistry that manages to squeeze lush and lovely music out of exposed skin, 70's television and purely synthetic beverages. Either way, this is a great taste of Sky Cries Mary, and makes me hope for marvelous things from their next full length release. -- ib
	The Sensualists / s/t / Audio Dregs (CD) Sample 30 seconds of "Clouds & Rain" This Portland, OR four-piece makes unique, danceable electronic pop music. A mixture of guitars, banjo, mc-303,groovebox, drums, Korg Polysix, farfisa, electric piano, electricband, Univox, Echoplex, turntables and a homemade bass Machine round out the package. A space theme weaves in and out of the tracks, making each cut even more ethereal. Anna Fidler's occasional vocals provide the necessary break from the electronic beats, telling silly stories about a trip to the zoo and a girl named Ginger who lives in Hawaii. A formidable first release. -- ha-n
	David Demnitz and Gamelan Son of Lion / Gamelan as a Second Language / American Gamelan Institute (CD) Sample 30 seconds of "Second Hand" David Demnitz's compositions for gamelan (a Javanese percussion orchestra, for those who flunked ethnomusicology) draw their charm from their wonderful clarity. Pieces like "Second Hand" and "Pendulum" are inspired by simple, cyclic events and draw the listener's ear to the timbral essence of the gamelan without intellectual posturing or overly-complex theoretical baggage. Other pieces ("Pick Your Notes" and "Graffiti Removal", for example) are less didactic but maintain this sense of purposeful directness. The 6 pieces on Gamelan as a Second Language are beautifully performed by New York's Gamelan Son of Lion, a seasoned and respected gamelan collective (of which Demnitz is a member). If you can't spell gamelan without the aid of a dictionary, you owe it to yourself to buy this CD. The rest of you should buy it too, it is music of uncommon grace and beauty! -- nw
	Saturnine / American Kestrel / Motorcoat (CD) Sample 30 seconds of "Old Flowers" You'll hear a lot that's familiar on American Kestrel -- Saturnine chart a jagged line through pop history, from the Byrds to R.E.M. to the Ladybug Transistor. Their songs, though taking a few cues from the folkier side of the sixties, are pure pop bliss -- as familiar and comfortable as a stretched-out old sweater, but never derivative. There's something very autumnal about American Kestrel; tracks like "Peace and Rest" and "Old Flowers" traffic in indelible sepia-toned memories and rustic simplicity. Try walking or driving through a fall-colored forest while listening to American Kestrel and see how perfectly the music fits the scenery. The band, I suspect, would prefer that you walk. -- gz
	Fredrik Ness Sevendal / Days Later / Apartment (7") Sample 30 seconds of "...was she out of her mind" Almost immediately noticeable is the unusually heavy weight of this 7". What's equally puzzling are the sounds that rest within its dark black grooves. Composed of strange, disturbing transmissions that are contrived through heavily effected guitars and organs, these two tracks are absolutely stellar in their piercing intensity. With surgical precision, Sevendal creates cold linear compositions that swarm from the stereo on a honed sonic wave. These crisp, malleable entities slowly metamorphose before your ears, altering moods and grazing nerves at the same time. Need a reason to purchase a turntable? Mail-order this beauty and head on down to the hi-fi store. -- am
	The Hot Buttered Elves / Beer Vote Lets Thud / Tapehiss (CASS) Sample 30 seconds of "Frozty" To begin, I know nothing at all about The Hot Buttered Elves. Their album has no liner notes, and they didn't provide a press sheet with this cassette. What can tell you is that they are one strange group. What would you expect from a band that offers lyrics like "I ate Bob Hope?" Beer Vote Lets Thud was recorded live and from what I can tell is a conceptual Christmas album. The band spin ludicrous tales of Santa, snowmen, crooner Bing Crosby and plenty of tinsel! Musically, HBE takes in aspects of funk, rock and folk, combining them to take the listener on a strange musical sleigh ride. Each track is enjoyable in a peculiar, somewhat disturbing way; "My tree is better than yours" and "Frozty," for instance, spread Christmas cheer like nothing Johnny Mathis has ever done. And who could forget the impromptu rendition of the theme from Dr. Seuss' The Grinch Who Stole Christmas? Those of you who lean toward the Bob Rivers brand of holiday wackiness will certainly appreciate Beer Vote Lets Thud, but the rest of you might be left scratching your heads in wonder. -- jj
	NATAS / Wicket World Wide.Com / Overcore/Gothom (CD) Sample 30 seconds of "Cyberkill" You might know it as "horrorcore" or "acid rap," but to NATAS it's just bread and butter. Their distinctly Detroit sound has allowed them to carve their own niche in the ever-widening hip-hop world -- and given their hometown, their horror/sci-fi approach to rap shouldn't be too much of a surprise. They combine mellow but rhythmic rapping with noir, sometimes demonic samples and heavy guitars to create their staple sound. Let's just leave it at this: Kid Rock and Eminem were influenced by NATAS. Wicket World Wide.Comis best exemplified by the chilly "Cyberkill", in which cyberpunk meets gangsta rap. Despite some nice moments, I'm not overly fond of this disc, but I'm certainly not a rap guru. -- nw
	Port Vale / Western Winds EP / Ojet (CD) Sample 30 seconds of "All the Able Postmen" The only point of contention you're likely to encounter with regard to Western Winds involves the vocals. Vocalist Lance Walker sounds confident, although you really have to grade the album on a curve in order to say he's consistently on-key. If you find that sort of thing charming -- and really, once you hear Walker you'll see that it's hard not to -- you'll enjoy Western Winds. If you require a trained vocalist and dead-on tunefulness, you'll need to look elsewhere...which is a pity, as you'll be depriving yourself of a sextet of happy, jangly, quintessentially hummable indie-rock tunes, like the tastily harmonic "Pacific Palisades". If you let that happen, you're an arse. -- gz
	Wende Bartley / Claire-voie / empreintes DIGITALes (CD) Sample 30 seconds of "Ellipsis" You have never heard anything like this. I mean that. On first listen, "Ellipsis" and "Rising Tides of Generations Lost" may remind one of the emotionally unsettling Diamanda Galas recordings of the late eighties. Imagine being left in the basement of the Amityville house with a box of wet matches and you have an approximation of Claire-voie's atmosphere of unease. There is a bleak austerity to these pieces, composed of a foreboding soprano accompanied by stray sounds, rustling percussion and ghostly synthesizers. Wende Bartley's Claire-voie is a siren song not meant for the faint hearted. -- dd
	Pole / CD1 / Matador (CD) Sample 30 seconds of "Lachen" There was recently a movie, the name of which escapes me, where Jodie Foster was sitting on top of a mountain with a radio receiver and she was listening to noises from outer space. I never saw the movie, only the previews, but I think that the premise was that she was making contact with aliens or something. Contact! That was the name of the movie...right? (Right. - Ed.) Anyways, I think that rather than making contact with aliens, she was listening to Pole. (Or Mix Master Mike, perhaps... - Ed.) Garbled, static-y noises, a blip here and a beep there, fragments of melody and that noise that you hear if you hold a seashell to your ear...that's what fills this CD. It's a beautiful aesthetic that translates well -- the perfect thing to put on when you want a simple distraction that doesn't require your full attention. -- ha-n
	SOS / SOS, The Mob and the Limo Love Scam / 3:16 Productions (CD) Sample 30 seconds of "Edumacation" This NYC-based band of melodic metal worshippers sings the praises of Stone Temple Pilots via vocal-friendly lyrics that resound with sparkling clarity. The grooving, rhythm-heavy beat is delivered with tinges of funk, hard rock and metal, and the almighty guitar affirms each song with its chugging, distorted energy. While fourteen tracks of this stuff border on aggravating derivity, the band's strong sense of humor keeps everything in perspective. -- am
	Gorky's Zygotic Mynci / Spanish Dance Troupe / Beggars Banquet (CD) Sample 30 seconds of "Poodle Rockin'" The world's maddest-named Welsh band is back with a new label and a new lease on life. They're as quirky as ever, wandering crazily over the stylistic map in a whirlwind tour of rock and roll styles. Aping late sixties Bowie on one hand ("Poodle Rockin'), Frank Zappa and Brian Wilson on another ("Desolation Blues") and coming up with several unexpected additional hands with which to tweak Syd Barrett, the Grateful Dead and the artpop world in general, Gorky's Zygotic Mynci are clearly still adept at keeping the listener's mind busy. However, during the group's label-less downtime, the Beta Band and Super Furry Animals appear to have split up Gorky's former turf. Can GZM survive against this heightened competition, or did their 15 minutes run out during the hiatus? Only time will tell. -- gz
	Spoon / The Agony of Laffitte / Saddle Creek (CD) Sample 30 seconds of "Laffitte Don't Fail Me Now" Spoon's new "concept single" (2 song CD) is a beautiful piece of plastic. It's a clear full size disc with a white mini-cd embedded in the middle. Fantastic. The music's quite nice, too -- both songs are mellow and melodic, maybe slightly sad, definitely less "rock" than the Spoon you might be familiar with from their releases on Matador and Elektra. "The Agony of Laffitte" is the more casual of the two tunes, and feels a lot like an acoustic living room jam session -- you can even hear an airplane landing at one point! "Laffitte Don't Fail Me Now" is livelier, with electric guitars, harmonized vocals and a catchy chorus. Both songs are a treat. -- ib
	The Timeout Drawer / Record of Small Histories / (CD) Sample 30 seconds of "1000 Reels" I don't believe they've ever made a soundtrack for a space voyage to Pluto, but if NASA were soliciting soundtrack contributions for said mission I would have to nominate Record of Small Histories. The Chicago three-piece creates seven otherworldly anthems of blistering intensity and epic proportion. Their expansive space-pop sounds open themselves up gradually, each song unraveling layer upon layer of noise, melody and feeling. The luscious "1000 reels" begins with an eerie keyboard drone, adding vocals, guitars and drums along the way as the song spirals upward to its cataclysmic finish. Other songs, such as "Applause" and "Tourist," make brilliant use of gentle atmospherics and warm analog drones. At times the band's sound is reminiscent of fellow Chicago trance-rockers Frontier due to their simultaneous use of ambience and fury. A space-pop record for those who don't like space-pop, Record of Small Histories finds The Timeout Drawer blasting out of the hemisphere. -- jj
	Weird Uncle Betty / In Porn We Trust / Dune (CD) Sample 30 seconds of "Lolita" Despite its CD-R format (I think that's for promotional purposes only - Ed.), In Porn We Trust is a polished, well-executed (if not a tad muffled by its production) big beat album. Crashing, funky breakbeats meld with phat, fuzzy synths and the occasional hardcore riff to create energetic party music. As the title indicates, samples from '80s-era porn movies are used liberally throughout, but are generally buried deep enough in the mix to avoid becoming distracting. What Weird Uncle Betty lacks in originality, he makes up for in sheer libido. If you wonder what a D.I.Y. Fatboy Slim would sound like, In Porn We Trust could be the answer to your musings. -- nw
	Les Rythmes Digitales / Darkdancer / Astralwerks (CD) Sample 30 seconds of "(Hey You) What's That Sound?" If you were old enough to "appreciate" music during the eighties -- and particularly if you came of age to the sound of twanky new wave synthpop melodies -- Darkdancer will sound very familiar to you. This is a silly album, stuffed full of bouncy, lighthearted grooves and good-natured fun; if most upbeat Eurodisco material can be described as "Browsing at Limited Express" music, this is "Browsing at Limited Express Under the Influence of Several Hits of Nitrous Oxide" music. Frontman and faux Frenchman Jacques Lu Cont refuses to be pinned down to a single style, hopping madly from funk to proto-house to R&B and proto-techno. All the while, you'll be shocked and amazed: Yes, that's really Nik Kershaw on vocals on "Sometimes". No, "Take A Little Time" never charted in the top 40 back in 1985. Yes, Lu Cont really copped a lyric from Buffalo Springfield's "For What it's Worth" for "(Hey You) What's That Sound?". After a while you'll be shocked and amazed because, gimmick's aside, the music's great...as long as you don't take it too seriously. -- gz
	Überhund / Inexpensively Embalmed / Cream Cloud (CD) Sample 30 seconds of "Cheap & Dreary Part 2" A gangly concoction of troubled guitars and repetitious, brooding beats, Inexpensively Embalmed precariously balances injections of cleanly filtered math rock and noisy explosions of guitar mayhem. Easily the most distinguishing feature of this enigmatic band is its wiggling, tone bending guitar lines, which lurch forward with drunken confidence on "Cheap & Dreary Part 2" and incorporate theatrical, tremulous riffs on "The Scare." From crashing crescendos to loping melodies, there’s no mistaking the distinct sound of the Überhund as it chases you down, pounces upon your chest and applies an unforgettable lambasting of jilted post-rock deconstruction. -- am

gz - george zahora | nw - noah wane | am - andrew magilow | ib - irving bellemead
jj - jason jackowiak | ha-n - heidi anne-noel | dd - deirdre devers