After hopping back and forth between a few different record labels overthe past four years, Berlin-based multi-instrumentalist, Frank SchültgeBlumm, has returned to the Morr Music fold for his latest release, Zweite Meer.I found myself easily drawn to his lush and gorgeous compositionalstyle, which is just as influenced by modern, minimalist classical asit is pop music.

A Hawk and a Hacksaw is chiefly the work of Jeremy Barnes, previouslyof krautrock brain-sizzlers Bablicon, and more recently of Guignol, abizarre one-off with members of Volcano the Bear. With A Hawk and aHacksaw, Barnes takes many of the European folk music fixations firstglimpsed on the Guignol album to their logical conclusion, creating asuite of ethnographical crossbreeds of indigenous music from France,Spain, Czech, Great Britain and Mexico.

There are nine albums worth of material on this one disc; KeithFullerton Whitman just doesn't bother sticking to any one idea, thereare too many new places to go for that. The Hrvatski debut forEntschuldigen records is 91 songs in 40 minutes.

Followers of Michael Gira's storied career might have anticipated his latest work with The Angels of Light as a natural reduction of his emotional approach to songwriting to its most basic form.

The third platter of stinky, petroleum-derived vinyl recently releasedon the painfully hip DFA label is this one from LCD Soundsystem. JamesMurphy's pet project has elicited some amazing, epochal dance singlesin the past—I'm thinking here of "Losing My Edge," "Yeah" and "BeatConnection"—which is why his long-awaited LP released earlier this yearon EMI could not help but come as something of a disappointment.

After releasing 2001's Run Come Save Me and its 2002 companion Dub Come Save Meto universal acclaim in the UK and deafening silence in the US, RodneySmith (as his mother calls him) has reportedly suffered several nervousor mental breakdowns, spent time in a psychiatric hospital at thebequest of his label, and nearly walked away from the music industryforever.

Not a single thing about this metal trio is particularly distinct ororiginal, but somehow that just doesn't matter. Peter Larson, FumieKawasaki, and Dave Sahijdak churn out destructive and catchy riffs witha powerful delivery, sticking to the straight and narrow path burnedopen years ago by other well-known guitar wizards and drunken partyfreaks.

Though they are inevitably described as the weird, Funkadelic-stylelittle sister band to !!!'s Parliament, ever since the release of2002's Street Dad,Out Hud have always seemed like their own entity.

Richard D. James may have made the most clever move of his entire,inconsistent career with the release of this series of twelve 12" vinylEPs. Only the first five are available as of this writing, but it isalready obvious that the grinning, tank-driving egotist is producingmusic that is unashamedly and resolutely anachronistic, kitschy andretrograde.

Absence is the heaviest hitting release to date from hip hop'sloudest collective. For the first time, the words come close tomatching the sounds in weight. According to the eponymous frontman, therecord is a statement on hometown Newark, NJ, and suffice to say itwon't be promoted by the Chamber of Commerce.

Proficiency at editing is just as prominent on the list of this quartet's skills as is their songwriting ability. Rather than presenting results along the way since recording commenced in 2002, Akron/Family have waited and produced a work that lends the project the air of appearing fully formed from out of nowhere.

If the truest goal of any one artist is to have as much completecontrol and freedom over their art as possible, it would seem this Seaand Cake frontman is as close as it gets, and the results are nothingshort of inspirational. If Sam Prekop's total artisticvision—writer/arranger/musician/singer and artwork painter—was ajoyride on his debut solo album, this time he's apt to changeperceptions and set the whole image on its side, making the wholelistening audience second guess every move.

DFA
This week brings three new slabs of heavy DJ vinyl from DFA Records,with this one by Black Leotard Front sounding the most adventurous tomy ears. "Casual Friday" is a massive 15-minute groove that starts outas ingratiatingly slick metropolitan disco and ends up asingratiatingly slick deconstructed electro-funk from planet weird.

This new single from The Juan MacLean has the distinction of being theDFA label's first 10" release, even though the music itself is notterribly distinct otherwise. "I Robot" is a significant departure fromJuan MacLean's familiar brand of floor-filling electro-dance, most ofwhich had a live, analog feel.

By the End of Tonight have been tagged with a variety of sub-genres intheir short existence: math rock, prog, emo, metal, thrash, post-rock.All of this labeling has resulted in the coinage some interesting andunique hybrids like "math-prog." Such intricate taxonomy can make anymusic critic both gag and delight at the same time but rarely doesjustice to a band's sound.

From the ominous chords of 40-second opener "Sikertelenseg," a solopiece for untreated piano, it is clear that this is a very differentVenetian Snares record than any of the previous 11 albums Aaron Funkhas recorded. The titles appear, at first, to be some sort of prankstergibberish, a la Aphex Twin or Autechre.

Although any self-respecting, card-carrying Mogwai fan most likelyalready had access to these songs, Matador presents a collection of BBCsessions which document the trajectory of the band. Presented are somealternate studio versions of classic and perhaps not-so-classic Mogwaisongs recorded at the BBC's Maida Vale studios (except for "R U Stillin 2 It" and "Superheroes of BMX" which were, alternately, recorded atthe Hippodrome).

Towards the end of last year, Boston-area singer/songwriter andmulti-instrumentalist Alex Chen released his impressive debut disc, Newborn,under the guise of Boy In Static. An interesting note on this disc isthat Germany's Notwist had decided to release it on their fairly newAlien Transistor label, essentially getting Boy in Static in on itsground floor. From strummed and plucked guitar progressions and voice,Chen magnifies the depth of his songs by saddling them up withlaptop-inspired clicks and wave/signal manipulation, bass, cello andtasteful keyboard melodies, blurring the lines between pop andelectronic-based music.

This odd release follows closely on the heels of Nagisa Ni Te's recent album The Same as a Flower.It's odd because it's a 40-minute album containing only four tracks,all of which are re-recorded versions of songs from their back catalog.It's hard to work out just what motivated Shinji Shibayama and MasakoTakeda to record this brief album, other than a desire to liberatethese songs from their previously relatively minimal instrumentalpalette and their low-fidelity recording style.

John Fahey was a master musician, completely redefining the guitar andpioneering several styles that are distinctly and wholly his own. BlindJoe Death was a name he ascribed to a few tracks on his first album ofthe same name. John Fahey is Blind Joe Death and, as the sleeve of thisrecord suggests, Blind Joe is still very much alive. Loren MazzacaneConnors and Christina Carter (along with artist Conrad Capistran andByron Coley) have composed the first in a proposed series of duorecordings dedicated to the memory and work of John Fahey.