Kranky's double CD reissue of the debut recording from Charalambidesreveals the origins of a band that, to some of us coming in late in thegame, were seemingly without one. Everything I've heard from this nowtriple-guitar band is amorphous and translucent, the music never quitetouches the ground, preferring to remain among the hazy and unsureimages of dreams.

This is the long-delayed sequel to the mad Welshman's 2003 Double Vulgar album, which was intended to follow closely upon the release of the first, but because of various problems surrounding the pornographic artwork and the dissolution of World Serpent Distribution, it has been delayed until now.

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.

Gum was the late 1980s project of two locked groove-obsessed Australianyouths. Seduced by the sounds of their warped and scratched records,Andrew Curtis and Philip Samartzis developed a conceptually challengingway to harness the hidden and embarrassing music of phonographic mediagone wrong.

Ielasi's last solo record Plansis an overplayed favorite of mine and one that marked quite a departurefrom the artist's past work as a featherweight improv stylist, a minerof hidden textures and master of the infinitesimal dynamic. Planswas a grandiose electroacoustic collage largely avoiding Ielasi'stradmark guitar which appeared only at the beginning and end of thepiece, resolving the brief flights of lyricism able to tilt thedisparate currents of the whole toward a slow expanse of weightless,melancholic bliss.

Famously cryptic and deliberately obscure, the San Francisco-based Residents have one-upped themselves with Animal Lover,a set of bizarre (even for them) tunes with rhythm tracks based uponanimal mating calls.

By all accounts I should be loving this album. Matt Elliott has takenmusic much farther than I could have ever imagined from listening toThird Eye Foundation back in the 1990s. He's a fantastically talentedmulti-instrumentalist, composer, producer, and arranger, and Drinking Songsonce again progresses very slightly from its predecessor.

I picked up this CD after the Sunburned Hand of the Man performance atthe Notown Sound Festival in Atlanta this past weekend, directly fromSBHOTM themselves, who seemed very proud of the album, claiming it wastheir best release yet. It's hard to disagree.

This is a reissue of an album that was originally released in a limitedrun on the now-defunct Isomorphic Records in 1996. For this edition, apreviously unreleased 13-minute bonus track from the original sessionshas been appended to the album. Music For the Head Balletis possibly Beequeen's most ambient work to date: a series of quietlyabstract, lengthy organ drones that amass slowly over time, graduallyrevealing their denseness and complexity.

Thinking critically about tribute albums is always easier when thesongs are not mere regurgitations of the originals. To laud one band'snearly-symmetric treatment of another band's song leaves a grotesquetaste in your mouth and feels almost a betrayal in some way.