Sanddollars, serving as an extended teaser for Why?'s Septemberfull-length, is easily Anticon's most agreeable record of the year todate. In fact, so much of it is so poppy—and at times (gasp!) radiofriendly—that it arouses suspicion. Is Sanddollars here just tomove units, swelling label coffers and providing funding for the nextworlds'-most -abrasive rap record?

Boston beat nerd Edan's second full length Beauty and the Beatis, appropriately titled, a hip hop fairy tale, a record with b-boycredentials and otherworldly destinations. Before he heard Straight Outta Comptonand converted to the church of rap, the former Berklee College of Musicattendee wielded guitars and grooved to Woodstock-era rock, folk andpsychedelic records.

Any producer that samples dialogue from the film Fear And Loathing In Las Vegasscores big points in my book. The line in question, in which thejournalist/protagonist Dr. Gonzo is ruminating on the joy and irony of"running a savage burn on one Las Vegas hotel and then just wheelingacross town and checking into another" captures the spirit ofHellfish's hardcore techno perfectly.

In the early 1980s, Diana Rogerson was peddling S&M gear at a shopin Kensington, creating her own films and performing in the performanceart duo Fistfuck (sometimes referred to as the "female Whitehouse")along with Jill Westwood. The short films were described as extremeversions of their live performances with urination and humiliation ascontrolled by Jill and Diana.

Once again I'm impressed with the packaging of this reissue. Having thecover and inside photos restored on nice paper in a booklet is farbetter than the flimsy Beastingscard and anything done in a chintzy digipack. While this is the secondChrystal Belle Scrodd record (originally released in 1986), it featuresmusic which pre-dates The Inevitable.

I wish more people knew about this group, as they are often brilliant,and far more consistent than a lot of bands who get way more press. TheMagic Carpathians began as a side-project of Polish progressive bandAtman, but since 1998 the group has become the primary outlet for themusic of Anna Nacher and Marek Styczynski.

It's no secret that 2004 was a banner year for the mysterious andprolific Texas artist who records as Jandek. Not only was it the firstyear that Corwood Industries released four albums in one year, the yearalso saw the release of Chad Freidrichs' documentary Jandek on Corwood,and the man himself made his first public appearance at a surprise gigat Glasgow's Instal Festival.

Only a couple of years ago, the mere suggestion that Jandek would ever come out of hiding to perform live at a series of festivals in Scotland would have seemed the height of absurdity. What a difference a day makes, and in this instance that day was October 17, 2004 at The Arches in Glasgow, Scotland, the place where the improbable became reality.

Mistaking this band for nothing more than an Animal Collective sideproject would be silly; it is clear that this duo has a distinctpurpose from the second "Berserker" begins: they're out to record thevoice of ghosts and the sound of the underworld.

Honey Owens of Jackie-O Motherfucker, Paul Dickow of Strategy andFontanelle, and Brian Foote, also of Fontanelle, form a bio-organicunit filled to the brim with all manner of exotic sounds and strangeinteractions. Combining sequenced and processed composition with liveand acoustic elements, this trio flies back and forth between jazzy,dub-influenced sounds, punk attitude, and spacious, dark atmosphereshighlighted by Owens' seductive voice.

Infamous among club DJs and producers for the deep tech-house styleincubated and pushed forward by their still potent Basic Channel andMaurizio records, Germany's Mark Ernestus and Moritz Von Oswald took amost adventurous step when they departed from the dancefloor for thelabor of love known as Rhythm & Sound.

The Hafler Trio's latest EP for Important is pretty much as expected ofthe series: one twenty minute piece of Andrew McKenzie's patentedatmospherics. The piece starts off with some soft metallic harmonics,sounding like heavily treated guitar strings.

As the members of Adult reconfirmed in last week's episode of The Eye,New York City is excessively clique-driven, obsessed with scenes,exclusivity and over-categorization. Nowhere is this more obvious thanin the current wave of so-called "Brooklyn Noise" artists, a group thatis said to include bands as various and sundry as Black Dice, Gang GangDance, Animal Collective and Excepter, among others.

This is, by far, the best record Keith Fullerton Whitman has released. Playthroughswas an album of electronic, fuzzy bliss and his two most recent EPswere introductions to musical accomplishments Whitman had never shownbefore.

A few years ago, Summersteps Records released Naked in the Afternoon, which was billed as a tribute to Jandek, but was really just a collection of other artists covering his songs. It must have seemed like a pretty funny idea at the time, and for Summersteps, it was an opportunity to showcase their mostly unknown roster of artists. Cassie Rose and the Pickled Punks, anyone?

This limited vinyl release is actually a reissue of an even morelimited live 3" CD-R. From start to finish it is relentless in itspursuit of deafness. Harsh digital noise is mixed with screeching andclangs.

The track listing for Pin Pointswas not impressive, as each bears titles like like map references (ie."555 W24" and "56 E"). It annoyed me when nearly every second Warprelease was named like this and it annoys me now. I was expecting somesort of bog-standard glitch and beat driven album. I was half right,Plumbline (Will Thomas) makes glitches and beats but most of the timehe does it well.

Contagious Orgasm have been around for a long time now, but if their name is unfamiliar, it's because much of their discography has been released in very small quantities or on labels already filled to the brim with peculiar artists, all of which probably already have a large fan base.

This album is yet another testament to the teeming genius that isMadlib's ability as a visionary producer and rapper. For those whodon't know, Lord Quasimoto's adventures began years ago with a $18 sackof mushrooms. "Basically, I had a bad trip and out came Quas." So wasthe genesis of Quasimoto, beat virtuoso Madlib's high-pitchedalter-ego. Previously only confined to private mixtapes, at PeanutButter Wolf's insistence he was made known to the world via 2000's The Unseen(because aside from inside Madlib's subconsciousness he only exists viamusic, which hasn't stopped Stones Throw from being inundated withconcert requests). Perpetually blazing, cartoonishly violent, neverafraid to throw a punch or a brick, a mack in the best Supaflytradition and dropping brilliantly slick rhymes all the way, Quas isboth an outlet for the author of Madvillian's darker thoughts and avehicle for listeners into a seedy urban ghetto lifestyle taken to ablunted extreme: a truly psychedelic hip-hop record.

From the start, I didn't have much hope for Luke Vibert's latest, a CD reissue of his two Planet Mu records, 2002's Homewerk and 2000's '95-'99,with four previously unreleased bonus tracks. Upon hearing a handfulthe MP3 samples from the Planet Mu website prior to its release, I wasbrought back to the grand letdown that was his lackluster YosepHalbum on Warp Records, which I referred to back in 2003 as "a journeyfar away from the dancefloor to a rather deep place somewhere insideVibert's rectum."