For me, a sign that I’m hooked is when a chunk of music becomes my go-to album under any and all circumstances. For the past two weeks, I’ve been playing Six Degrees of Separation once a day, usually first thing in the morning. And that’s another sign. First thing in the morning. It means, “I like everything else less”. I don’t know what the music literati call this; maybe drum & bass, hard dub? In any case, when I win my millions and get to pimp out my Lamborghini roadster with a smokin’ sound system, I’ll be cranking this album to eleven on my first trip down the highway, grooving, then weeping that it’s only an EP.

I’ve been wanting to post something about this album for a while now. If you like The Avalanches, if you like squeaky little (Jackson Five-ish) retro soul voices and bopping 60′s female choruses adding lightness to a deep (but not dark) funk groove, you gotta check this out. For the last couple of months, this has been at the top of my playlist. My only problem with this CD is that I play it too much. Please, sir, can I have some more?

OK, this album feels like a guilty pleasure to me. Why? Because I play it every day. It’s become one of my go-to albums for a dependable groove. I don’t know how you feel about dub in general, but if you like non-sparse, yet non-complex trippy music, then this beastie is for you. And the guy who did it, Rafael Hernandez, is Mexican. You can’t get more Jamaican than that, mon. Curry goat in a burrito, a doobie and an infinite delay. Sounds like a party to me.

If you like Bonobo, this album will please you mightily. I’m scribbling about this today because yesterday I was wandering around in a fog with a trippy tune in my head lamenting the fact that I couldn’t remember where I’d heard it. During my hour of woeful lamentation, I tried to face the daunting task of pouring through my library, sampling tracks I thought might fit the tone of my ‘head piece’. The more I grooved on the tune, the more frustrated I became. What the hell? Was I getting alzheimer’s? And then I remembered it was Bonobo, from their new album. Oh, Happy Days!

Like all their previous works, (Days to Come, Dial ‘M’ for Monkey, Animal Magic), this one’s worth every penny. Being a total music snob, I feel completely justified when there are artists out there that create works of this calibre. Not too bright, not too dark, not too loud, not too quiet. This is composed music that could rival any jazz standard. No one needs be embarrassed by this being ‘mere’ pop, so sophisticated is the musicality and execution.

Sorry, I don’t mean to give a review, just a whole-hearted recommendation. Buy this thing. You’ll love it. And maybe you’ll be grooving on it one day with no stereo or iPod in sight, and come to thank me.

I heard about ten seconds each of three different tracks and five minutes later had ordered all three CDs in the series. Only the first volume has arrived so far, but it’s been in my CD player exclusively since.

Holy crap is this every good. My initial reaction was, "I can pretty much give up trying to make my own music now. It’s all been done."

The closest things I’ve heard are Robert Rich’s electro-acoustic ambient and formal percussion ensemble music like Nexus. The former because of the instrumentation, the latter because of their razor-sharp technique and non-standard rhythms.

OK, I’m making this sound like academic mood ring music. Sorry. Let me be perfectly clear what this is. These guys got groove. These guys got darkness in ‘em. These guys got ‘lectric guitars, space bass and toy pianos. And then there’s the drums. Holy mother of a Chubby Chicken gut, they got drums. They got steel, they got kit, they got hang, they got it all. And every note has been set in its place by two guys in tuxes with white gloves. They ain’t no auto-quantification going on here. A little sticker on the cover quotes an Uncut review: "Sound[s] like the modern jazz quartet of the 24th Century". I wouldn’t go that far – to say it sounds like something that couldn’t have been created today. But seriously, in three hundred years, you could certainly play this to a house and get a standing ovation.

This lovely new CD arrived in the mail the other day. It seems my main way of finding cool new music has become mining old anthologies and googling the individual artists. Quench’s latest was found this way.

Like Yagya, this is ambient-with-a-beat, not a distractingly hard beat, but not wimpy-assed electro-pop either. And much to their credit, they’re not afraid of dissonance, noise or tangents in their tracks. Listening to this, I get this resurgence of post-modern academic music hate burping to the surface.

Sorry, let me clarify.

Outside the ivory tower, everything is folk music of one kind or another – even urban pop is just another type of folk music made by people skilled in a very narrow style, unaware of the larger context of their harmonies, progressions and melodies.

Well, having listened extensively to both sides, I can’t help but turn that idea on its head. When I think of modern academic music, I see an extraordinary narrowness of vision where context becomes an end in itself. With the exception of quaint, rib-elbowing references to previous styles, ivory tower music is on a teleological course, straight as an arrow from its own primitive folk roots, up through each "classical" stage of its history, to now, where, like the pope’s catholicism, it is surrounded by poor struggling fools who have lost the one true way.

Sadly, with context becoming an end in itself (Schoenberg’s 12 tone system is a prime example), people stopped listening to new academic music in the mid-20th century. Why? Because, though it was, admittedly, intellectually challenging and continued to reward the careful listener, it wasn’t made for the listener anymore. It became masturbation (and sometimes ear rape) instead of consensual sex.

Anyway, sorry, end of rant. What I’m trying to get at here is that when it comes to pushing the harmonic and timbral envelope, academics like Cage or Stockhausen no longer have corner on the market. In fact, it’s now quite the opposite. Academic music now sounds incredibly quaint and restrained compared to much modern electronica – be it trip hop, ambient or minimal experimental. And – key point – what are people actually listening to these days? And no, I don’t mean what is Homer Simpson listening to. What is the educated ear in 2009 listening to? It sure as shit isn’t some PhD bumfuck with a "Duo for cello and modified piano".

Ok, I’m done now.

Rigning	Will I Dream During the Process

I freaking love these two albums. I guess Will I Dream During the Process was pressed in a limited edition of 1500 and is now, though not rare, certainly pricey to buy. Me, I forked out for the 10 Euro 320bps MP3 from Sending Orbs in the Netherlands. (Man, do I ever love Paypal!)

This is my kind of ambient. The genre of Chill is somewhat antiquated these days, otherwise I’d be tempted to apply that moniker to Yagya for the simple reason that this is beat-driven, not flat-line pad ambient.

Years ago, I heard his first album, Rhythm of Snow and wasn’t jumping up and down about it. But these two are a whole other orchard of sonic juice-berries. If this were traditionally composed music, each one would be marked Largo (between 40 and 60 bpm). But the feel of the music is sometimes much faster, often getting up to Moderato (~120bpm) without seeming like it’s rushing in any way.

Anyway, the guy behind Yagya is an Icelander named Aðalsteinn Guðmundsson. On second thought, knowing he’s from Iceland, maybe I will call this music Chill. Its just too cool not to (ar-ar).

When I first listened to this CD, I found it quite glitchy (lots of little sounds were competing for attention). But after a couple more listens, it’s actually quite the funky little disc. There seems to be everything here. Ambient soundscapes, inventive electro and jazz rhythms, extremely compitent melodic and percussive synth work. Yes, it has IDM written all over it. I wouldn’t jack in my iPod and try going to sleep by it, but man… this album has serious flow…

Liquid Stranger, The Invisible Conquest

I’ve been grooving to this excellent album all afternoon. It is a fabulously well-produced slice of dub that is neither annoyingly minimal nor cheesily over-affected and effected – and god knows, there’s a ton of that. All I ask of a good dub album is that they keep the groove deep and the fx rich. And this honey delivers on both counts.

You know, sometimes you just want a nice long instrumental track with a steady groove and no annoying bits in it. This is the third Bola album I’ve bought and I haven’t a bad thing to say about any of them – other than sometimes it’s a little more perky than most IDM/Ambient. Melodically, it gently borders on Euro-pop fluff every once in a while. But that’s what you want in a CD that isn’t going to bug the hell out of other people within earshot of your stereo. Thank god there’s no dumb-ass techno kick drum making you want to hang yourself from the clothesline with your dead grannies panties. Of the three albums (there are many more out there that I haven’t heard yet) Soup is the pick of the litter. Want something easy and modern to groove to while reading or at work? Gotta love this one.