Tomas Korber has written various compositions and played improvised music since the early 90s. He has worked solo and collaborated with the likes of G�nter M�ller, Otomo Yoshihide and Toshimaru Nakamura. His latest record, Brackwater, was a collaboration with ErikM, Nakamura and Yoshihide and was released on the M�ller owned For4Ears label. Stylus writer Ed Howard called it: “a music possessing a gorgeous muscularity, a mix of delicate beauty and dense energy that is perfectly balanced.”

Still to come this year, a 3� CD-R on Kissy Records and a collaboration with Dan Warburton on L�Innomable. For more Korber information, you can visit his website here.

Since my mother is from Andalucia (the part of Spain where flamenco originates), this music has been all around me since I was a little child. That probably helped my understanding of it, but I am convinced that even people hearing this for the very first time can be instantly turned into believers by its raw power and authenticity. I have always been most attracted by the chant. Of course the guitar playing and the rhythm sections are baffling too… but what really gets under my skin are the singers. Here are 3 of my favorites:

Antonio Mairena� Al Moro Yo Me Voy, [Cantes de Jerez]

This is a “siguiriya”, one of my favorite palos (=subgenres) in flamenco. I love how Mairena sustains and modulates his voice in this song�and if you listen to this with headphones (do it!), you’ll be suprised at the panoramic “effects”. I have no clue whether this was done on purpose�it probably was a normal stereophonic recording and the weird panning comes from Mairena moving his head around while singing.

[buy some of Mairena�s releases here]

Camaron� Potro de Rabia y Miel, [Potro de Rabia y Miel]

Camar�n is one of the best selling flamenco artists of all time. He was one of the few who had the privilege of marketing on an international level. I don’t know why, but it�s probably because of his crossover experiments with rock and jazz. This song, however, was taken from the last album he made before passing away. It was a “back to the roots” thing, and one of his best albums (if you’re interested in his crossover stuff, I’d recommend Calle Real). I especially like how the music (especially the percussion) corresponds to the track title: “a colt of rage and honey”.

[buy Potro de Rabia y Miel here]

Manuel el Agujeta� Como Cosita Mia, [Grandes Cantaores del Flamenco Vol. 8]

If flamenco were hip-hop, then el Agujeta would be gangsta rap. This guy has been incarcerated several times (at least once for attempted murder, I was told) and the legend goes that they only let him out of prison because he could sing so well. And indeed: you’d pardon him too, because there are not many singers with a voice as powerful as el Agujeta’s. On this track, I particularly like the lyrics. They’re rather typical for this flamenco subgenre (again a “siguiriya”, this one consisting of 4 verses):

Como cosita m�a
te he mirao yo
pero quererte como yo te queria
eso se acab�

Loosely translated:

I looked at you
As if you were mine
But to love you the way I did
That is over now

[buy some of Agujeta�s releases here]

Stylus has asked some of our favorite writers to talk about their favorite songs each week. Today, we present Phil Dellio� favorite three songs of the moment.

Phil Dellio teaches 7th grade and lives in Ontario. He also maintains his own website here and is the co-author of I Wanna Be Sedated: Pop Music in the Seventies, you should buy it. Without further ado:

The FUGS
Carpe Diem
Frenzy
Dirty Old Man
[The Fugs Second Album]

The school board I work for is always telling me that teachers are supposed to be �lifelong learners�, so I�m always trying to acquire new knowledge. This summer the most useful bit of wisdom I came across was from an old Fugs song, �Carpe Diem�: �You can�t outfuck the angel of death.� I�m going to try to remember that. I sense that I�ve been spending my life up to this point trying to outfuck anything that moves, and it�s just not working.

For the longest time, the little bit I knew about the Fugs came from the entry for them in Lillian Roxon�s old The Rock Encyclopedia, which I used to pore over obsessively when I discovered a copy in my middle-school library 30 years ago. Lillian�s first sentence: �Who could start to describe the Fugs?� That was more than enough to get me hooked, but I was never able to fill in that blank, as the only albums of theirs I�d ever see were prohibitively-priced wall copies at used stores. Thanks to somebody out there, however, I was recently able to download semi-recent reissues of The Fugs First Album (1965) and The Fugs (1966). I don�t think the Fugs would have minded�if they were around today, they�d probably even be celebrating the joys of frenzied group file-sharing rather than Bohemian orgies.

�Carpe Diem,� which turns up on both albums in different versions, is one side of the Fugs, the nihilistic folkies who undoubtedly knew the Smithsonian and Harry Smith (name-dropped on album #1�s �Nothing�) catalogues front to back. �Carpe Diem� reminds me of one of those scary Carter Family deathwatch songs like �There�s No Hiding Place Down Here,� another variation on the truism that we�re all doomed in the end. The earlier version is drony and hypnotic, the second go-around prettier and more elegiac, notwithstanding its introduction of the �outfuck� lyric quoted earlier. Hearing a pop musician sing �fuck� in 1966 would be noteworthy in almost any context; hearing it sung sweetly and mournfully is thrilling.

On �Frenzy� and �Dirty Old Man,� Lenny Bruce and Mad magazine take over. What surprises me most about these songs (and �Slum Goddess,� �Group Grope,� and a few others) is not the words, which, as great they often are, are pretty much what I anticipated, but how good the Fugs were at flailing their way through rudimentary garage rock at a time when everyone was still making it up on the spot. You get the feeling they loved corny three-chord rock and roll (and especially loved that it was miraculously within their grasp to play it), unlike their obvious parallel, the Mothers of Invention, where you�re sometimes not sure where the residual teenage affection ends and the condescending esthete takes over. �Frenzy� provides exactly what its title promises, a hyperdriven two-minute invitation to the band�s new army of groupies to join them after the show for �baskets of love.� Ed Sanders was nearing 30 when the Fugs first got together, while co-founder Tuli Kupferberg was 42(!); on �Frenzy� they sound like kids let loose in a candy store, overwhelmed by the possibilities. I mean, I�m sure there�s some distance and irony in there somewhere, but those baskets of love carry the day. �Dirty Old Man� whizzes by in a kind of drill-sergeant call-and-response, and I suspect anyone who remembers Arte Johnson�s old park-bench lecher from �Laugh-In� (�Do you believe in the hereafter? Then you know what I�m here after�.�) will love it as much as I do. It�s probably redundant at this point to speculate on who they�re *really* singing about.

[visit The Fugs� website here, buy Fugs related material here]

A few weeks ago, Stylus presented its third Survival Guide. This particular one was devoted to the exciting London hip-hop hybrid known as grime. Simon Hampson presented ten tracks with his thoughts on their relative importance to understanding where the genre has come from and where it�s going.

Below are three of those songs with Hampson�s descriptions attached.

J-Sweet� Gutter

One of the best ever true 8-bars (in which there are two alternating beats, repeated for 8 bars each). From the opening screech of the alarm siren, you know it�s going to be hardcore. Then that brutalist one-note stutter comes pummelling in, buzzing like a thousand starving locusts, and things kick off properly in gabba-garridge fashion. The other 8-bar sequence is a nicely dark piece of drum n bass-ish gelatinous synth but really, it�s just there to build up anticipation for the other, more mentalist, beat to come in. A slice of the really nasty, adrenalin crazed side of grime. Love it like cooked food.

D Double and Shola Ama� So Contagious

Grime isn�t just about angry boys shouting over clattering beats, you know. There�s a softer, R & B influenced, side to it that�s been called �Grimette� and is spearheaded by Terror Danjah of Aftershock and Davinche of Paperchase Recordings. Here, Terror does his trademark futuristic shiny but grimey production thing, sounding like El-P raised on dub and rave. Synth lines swoop, twist and curl round each other like post-coital cigarette smoke, while the grimey edginess is kept in view by the metallic, clinking delay applied to those crunching beats which always remind me of walking in the snow. Shola Ama is fantastic on here as always, sticking to the tune and not doing the hateful Mariah-warble like so many R & B singers. And that moment where the music drops out and she sighs, �onhhhh�, like she�s both trying to regain composure and throwing herself straight in to love and passion is probably the sexiest thing you�ll hear all year (on record that is, what you get up to in your private life is your business). And the mighty D Double�s on it as well. What more can you ask for?

Riko and Target� Chosen One

There�s a sub-genre within grime of very inspirational, conscious tracks focussing on self-belief and self-reliance. �Chosen One� is probably the best of these, with other examples being Wiley�s �Pick Yrself Up� and Roll Deep�s �I Will Not Lose�. Producer DJ Target, of Roll Deep, performs a strange trick on this track, where it sounds very lush, thick, even orchestral, but if you listen closely there�s actually very little going on: just a few sketches of intersecting samples of synth and string-led melody, which suggest a much fuller sound, leaving your mind to fill in the gaps. The tune also has a wicked shimmery, delicate quality to it, sounding like it could fall apart at any moment into a million diamonds of sound. Riko hits you deep with the chorus of, �Stay calm, don�t switch your composure blud, use your head then battle through cuz you know you�re the chosen one�. Total belief and determination. And it also features one of my favourite lyrics ever: �Soon gonna see me on satellite / On Saturday/ On Saturnight�wait, Saturnight, that ain�t right / But I told you before I�ll say what I like!� Kids should study Riko in school.

[Interested in buying some of these 12��s? Try these fine record stores: Uptown Records, Rhythm Division, Black Market and Big Apple]

Typically there�s no theme to my short time as curator of the StyPod, because I�m a tardy individual and lacking in ideas strong enough to offer some kind of binding scheme to the three songs I�ve picked beyond the fact that a; I love them all and b; I�ve written something vaguely related to each of them lately.

Delakota� The Rock, [One Love]

A few months ago I wrote a Seconds column about this song, an unexpected moment of perfect future pop from the guy who used to play drums with early 90s English punkers Senseless Things (search around for their singles �Homophobic Asshole� and �Too Much Kissing�, both wonderful in wildly different ways). While Cas Browne was a formidable drummer, I don�t think anybody ever expected him to emerge from the rubble of his former group with anything like this. Almost anyone I�ve ever played �The Rock� to has loved it so much they�ve run out and bought the album it came from, 1998�s One Love, but these days it�s rather hard to come by. And so it seemed like a natural choice for the StyPod. Like I said in the initial column, although the whole song is lovely, it�s really all about one sound, the delicious, multi-coloured spiral trilling from the right-hand channel. The version we�ve included here for you is the full one from One Love rather than the shorter single mix.

[read Nick�s extended take on this song here, buy One Love here]

Bark Psychosis� Shapeshifting, [///Codename:Dustsucker]

This was first put up as a download on the Fire Records website earlier this year before ///Codename:Dustsucker was released; I�d say it was as a taster of the album, but Graham Sutton had already given people that by leaking most of the other tracks onto the internet 18 months or more ago. Female vocals and a high-end Lee Harris groove are absolutely destroyed after a few minutes by savage, acidic guitars and layer upon layer of meticulous, crepuscular noise, encapsulating Bark Psychosis� second album as well as any one track lifted from its pages can.

[visit Sutton�s website here, buy ///Codename:Dustsucker here, read Nick�s review here, read Nick�s interview with Sutton here ]

Embrace� Too Many Times, [Gravity single]

Yorkshire�s finest and most maligned band demonstrate a different side to their sound on this b-side to the recent single �Gravity�, which showcases their oft-ignored tendency towards noise and shunts their melodic edge to the rear. Written on piano initially by Danny McNamara, the rest of the band fleshed it out into the spacerock-goes-r�n�b monster you can hear here, piling on jerking rhythms and savage jolts of guitar until psychosis sets in. Back in April when I heard unmixed tracks that would end up on Out of Nothing this was one of the real stand-out tracks, but they were probably right not to include it on the album�it�s so savage and off-kilter that throws everything else around it out of shape. Play loud.

[visit Embrace�s website here, buy the Gravity single here, read Nick�s review of Out of Nothing here, read Nick�s interview with the band here]

I had the pleasure of seeing Patton Oswalt perform a live set of his material for an upcoming Comedy Central show this past Sunday. And while he was incredibly funny with a wide ranging set of topics, I couldn�t get past the feeling that there was something missing. You see, Oswalt used a good deal of material from his CD just released. And there�s nothing wrong with that. If the audience had heard it before, they barely let on. I barely let on, at times, because the delivery was so much more engaging in person than it comes across on CD. BUT. There�s something about seeing a comic venture into uncharted territory, trying out his act for the first time that is much more energizing and vital than the tied and true. To paraphrase Bill Hick�s famous maxim: �Excuse me while I just plow right through this *cough* one more time�.

And with that fear of the unknown often comes failure. And, frequently, it�s far funnier to hear an established comic bomb. Or worse, come unraveled by the audience. So, this week�s column is devoted to comics melting down.

A quick note: if you have issues with profanity, then I highly recommend that you don�t download any of these tracks.

Bill Hicks
The Irony Of Pure Hatred
The God of Comedy
[Dark Poet]

Stylus writer Dave McGonigle wrote an entire article on Hicks here, which merely hinted at Hicks� relative obscurity in the States. But what he didn�t talk about much�and you can�t blame him�is the fact that Hicks frequently bombed in America. Anyone even remotely familiar with his work remembers the infamous Chicago show in which he berates a woman until she leaves. Or his loving recollections of locals from his tour swings through the South. But this show from Toronto, I believe, is probably the lowest he ever got that remains somewhat widely distributed.

The first clip is Hicks in a strange position: doing impressions. From the vast amount I�ve heard of his released material, I don�t think I remember ever doing a bit with extended impressions. They soon devolve, though, into Hicks looking at an audience member and realizing that said audience member possibly wants him to die.

The second starts with Hicks simply saying �Uncle�. And then ends with an extended discussion with an audience member about trying to bum a cigarette and the price of Canadian cigarettes. It�s rather boring, honestly.

[visit the Bill Hicks website here and buy merchandise, read Dave McGonigle�s Stylus article about Hicks here]

Andrew Dice Clay
Hour Back, Get It?, [The Day The Laughter Died]
My First Concert, [The Day The Laughter Died Part II]

But not NEARLY as boring as the first track on offer here. Clay tries to say goodbye to the audience and then descends into a nearly seven minute parody of a joke. Seven minutes. I�ve edited it so that you’ll get the idea and possibly some listening pleasure. Somehow I doubt the latter. The track was the penultimate bit from Clay�s The Day The Laughter Died, which was a two-disc set in which he berates the audience (the “incestous” Dad comes immediately to mind) and generally spouts nonsense (witness the hunchback bit on “Hour Back…” for proof).

But Part I wasn�t nearly as fascinating as the depressing and nearly unlistenable Part II. It only takes one disc for him to nearly comes to blows with an audience member who challenges him to perform alongside him and see who the audience would like better (he�s a magician?). In any case, this bit is taken from earlier on in the night and it�s a gem of a depressing story in which Clay recounts his first concert-going experience. It�s completely out of place on the disc and inevitably gets overlooked in the sea of profane and sick �humor� that precedes it. He moves quickly from the story into a semi-racist fantasy of The Andy Griffith Show in which all the characters would be black, brushing aside any of the pathos that might have been gained from this oddly touching narrative.

Needless to say, I honestly love both of these releases and highly recommend you get your hands on either.

[visit an unofficial Andrew Dice Clay website here, buy Part I here, buy Part II here]

Neil Hamburger
He Wasn�t One
Technical Difficulties
[Laugh Out Lord]

Post-modern bombing. Hamburger, if you�re not familiar with his work, takes the idea of a bombing comedy to its logical conclusion, utilizing audience members that won�t respond to his questions and ones that find the recording device and shut off the act entirely. If you have the occasion to buy Laught Out Lord, rest assured you�ll get to the popular bit that Hamburger mentions to the non-zipper lipped �audience member�. It�s definitely worth it.

[visit Neil Hamburger�s website here, buy Laugh Out Lord here]

Tim Kinsella is the lead singer of Joan of Arc, which began in 1995 after his previous band the seminal emo-core band, Cap’n'Jazz, broke up. Stylus writer Bjorn Randolph called their most recent album on Polyvinyl, 2004�s Joan of Arc, Dick Cheney, Mark Twain, �one of the more difficult and ultimately rewarding musical statements of the year”. [stylus review] With that in mind, Stylus asked Kinsella to curate a day at the Stypod.

This sounds a bit tricky (to pick out three in the whole world of songs), but off the top of my head the songs I’ve been excited about recently:

Simon Finn� Jerusalem, [Pass the Distance]

I think this record was made in the late 60’s or early 70’s and I don’t know if there has ever been another. He just played in Chicago for the first time and my lady friend’s band opened. I was out of town and missed it, but she said he did this song live and it sounded just like the recording�which is insane if you imagine a 60 year old man screaming and flipping out like that. It’s in the whole Syd Barrett, Roky Erickson school of guys playing two chords for 6 minutes, confident and confused. The lyrics disregard any religious orthodoxy in search of a greater spiritual answer, and I eat up that sort of �the symbols of things get in the way of understanding things’ kind of stuff. It’s like the vocal take equivalent of Mel Gibson�s Passion.

[visit Simon Finn�s website here, buy Pass the Distance here, read Stewart Voegtlin�s Stylus review here]

Jackson C. Frank� Blues Run the Game, [Blues Run The Game]

I got this record a few years ago and was totally devastated by it and then sort of had to put it away to get on with my life. I’ve just rediscovered it and it’s so heavy. The guitar playing is great, a bit tricky but always in the service of the song and the vocal delivery is very simple and a bit affected in a charming old-fashioned folky way. Lyrically it’s so simple that any more production considerations would make the whole thing sound hokey, but it just comes across as modest, self-deprecating and super fucking bummed out.

Apparently he drank an absurd amount and Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel and Nick Drake were all on his jock and he had no time for them and then he was in a fire and survived with a lot of scars and then drank even more and by that point he was too bummed out to be bothered with playing music. So the legend goes . . .

[visit Jackson C. Frank�s website here, buy Blues Run The Game here]

Lungfish� Space Orgy, [The Unanimous Hour]

Lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish. Lungish lungfish lungfish, lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish. Lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish, lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish. Lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish lungfish.

[visit Dischord�s Lungfish page here and buy their records, including The Unanimous Hour at the same place]

Note: These tracks are no longer available for download.

Stylus has asked some of our favorite writers to talk about their favorite songs each week. Today, we present Scott Woods� favorite three songs of the moment.

Scott Woods lives in Toronto and is the editor of rockcritics.com and the co-author of I Wanna Be Sedated: Pop Music in the Seventies, you should buy it. Without further ado:

When Todd asked me to host this gig, it took me about 30 seconds to decide which songs I would choose. These digitally-enhanced ballads from 1988�which I have a feeling is the beginning of the end for this particular kind of song (tell me I’m wrong, please!)�are maybe the most heavily-rotated 7″ singles in my collection. I’m more than happy to give them a public airing here�to spread the love, as it were.

Al B. Sure!- Nite and Day, [In Effect Mode]

#7 on Billboard’s pop chart and #1 on R&B, so this isn’t exactly obscure, though I’m guessing that it’s been largely forgotten about (I don’t recall hearing a shout-out to Al B. in “Slow Jamz,” but maybe I missed that part). There’s a little bit of Al Green in Sure!’s approach (that verging-on-euphoric falsetto), and a whole lot of that other Green fellow, Gartside, as well. Which is to say that for all its twitchy rhythmic affectations�a prickly keyboard stab here, a fluttering hi-hat there�”Nite and Day” achieves the same sort of silky grandeur that Scritti Politti do in their wonderful ballad, “A Little Knowledge,” though this is more direct: no flip-flopping or “subversive feminism” on Al B’s part whatsoever (not that I can detect, not that I even know what that means). Produced by Kyle West, whom I’m ashamed to say I’d never even heard of prior to looking this up; I’ve always just assumed it was Teddy Riley.

[visit an unofficial Al B. Sure! website here, buy In Effect Mode here]

Nu Shooz� Should I Say Yes, [Told U So]

The first single from Nu Shooz’s Told U So, and the follow-up to the great Top 40 Miami-style dance hits, “I Can’t Wait” and “Point of No Return.” Inexplicably, maybe even criminally, it failed to repeat the success of those hits, peaking at #41 (”and shortly after Nu Shooz was not heard from”, i80s.com sadly informs). Ridiculously melodic (the “so many reasons” hook is like a summation of every great S.O.S. Band record ever made), this too’s a bit Scritti-like, especially that sprinkly, high-end, arpeggiated synth thing that runs through the background, a sound so subtle and mysterious I could listen to it on Repeat, forever. Valerie Day’s vocal is nicely understated, and the glistening, delayed, slightly dissonant piano rhythm may or may not have perked up the ears of Hank Shocklee (more likely just a cool synchronicity: “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos” also came out in ‘88). Not to be too casual with the reference points here: in every other respect, this is about as far from Public Enemy as you can possibly get�a song not for the streets, but for the bedroom. At night, and all alone.

[read Nu Shooz�s i80s.com biography here, buy Told U So here]

Bardeux� When We Kiss, [Bold As Love]

This actually reached # 36 on Billboard, but who bought it? And where’d they (”they” meaning Bardeux�two caucasian girls and a producer, I seem to recall) go? The crack of thunder that kicks things off here indicates that you are in for an ominous ride, and indeed you are, though it’s a quiet and pretty sort of ominous rather than a menacing and throbbing sort of ominous. A face-against-a-windowpane-in-the-rain sort of ominous rather than the hand-behind-the-shower-curtain sort. Said ominousness is underscored by the lyrical ellipses in the chorus (”And when we kiss…/ It feels like this…”), and the synth patch labelled “snake charmer” lends it a mildy exotic flavour. The whole thing may strike some as being a bit on the precious or twee side�and their rapping? let’s just say charm outweighs presence five to one�but you gotta admit, that 808 beat is completely adorable.

[read Bardeux�s allmusic.com biography here, buy Bold as Love here]

Note: These tracks are no longer available for download.

Queen � Dancer, [Hot Space]

I’ll be writing something about Queen’s massively underrated 1982 album Hot Space for Stylus in the upcoming months, but there’s no reason you should be denied the opportunity to enjoy one of its funkier wares. Brian May has openly expressed regret over the album’s headlong dive into disco textures following the success of “Another One Bites The Dust”, but since this track rocks harder than much of what followed, I have to assume his disappointment stems more from the album’s commercial failure.

“Dancer” is by far the finest May-penned track on the album, and would be the arguable highlight of the album if they hadn’t slapped the year-old classic one-off “Under Pressure” onto the end. Merciless grooves, blistering solos, slathering vocal hysterics (”Hot Space! Let’s Go!”), eccentric production and choir-like harmonies are easily found throughout their discography, but rarely did they attempt to cram it all onto one track. This is probably what Led Zeppelin’s MTV move would have sounded like if John Bonham hadn’t died before “Working For The Weekend” came out.

[buy Hot Space here]

Rocket From The Crypt� Tarzan, [All Systems Go! 2]

The only reason I have any desire to direct a teen comedy smash is to put this song on the hit soundtrack and give it the commercial life it deserves. Originally released on an indie 7-inch as a perverse “fuck you” to their previous employers at Interscope and, if trumpet player JC2000 was telling me the truth, never performed live, “Tarzan” adds oodles of gratuitous instrumentation to RFTC’s already dense sound. These guys are the Meat Lover’s Pizza of rock as it is, and when the horns, guitars, pianos, animal references, woahs and ooh-ah-unga-ah’s build to a claustrophobic climax only to have a SITAR show up, your arteries may never recover.

[visit the Rocket from the Crypt website here, buy All Systems Go! 2 here]

Limp Bizkit� Livin� It Up, [Chocolate Starfish & The Hot Dog Flavored Water]

“Dedicated to you, Ben Stiller! You are my favorite muthafucka! I told you, didn’t I?” “Don’t hate me, I’m just an alien with thirty-seven tons of new millenium.” “Pay me no mind, I seen the Fight Club about 28 times.” “Princess Aguilera, come and get some!” “Puff, puff, give! *inhale* The marijuana cig - oops! I don’t even smoke but I love the way it smells *exhale*.” “I’m-a get it out with the muthafuckin’ microphone! Plug it in my soul! I’m a renegade riot getting out of control!” That’s the Eagles on the chorus. Dismissing this guy as a “mook” is like calling Kool Keith just another rapper. Fred Durst is the pinnacle of wtf-itude, a bottomless well of incomprehensible absurdity and should be respected as such. Can you feel me? Hell yeah.

[visit the Limp Bizkit website here, buy Chocolate Starfish� here]

Note: These tracks are no longer available for download.

If there�s one thing that�s way misunderstood about experimental music, it�s the scarcity/exclusivity angle. I�ll be the first to admit that there�s probably something very scoff-worthy about the �limited edition of 7� issue, particularly in those cases where at least a thousand grimy noise nerds are going to be clawing at each other�s throat over that oh-so-rare cassette-only masterpiece packaged in duct tape and used tissues or whatever (actually, I�m pretty sure this is Spite�s business model). If you�re a bit charitable, however, you might think of a short-run CDr or MP3 release as an opportunity for artists to float around good ideas to a small audience without having to live next to a depressing stack of unsold CDs for the rest of their days. Still, some things slip through the cracks. In fact, handfuls of worthwhile listens remain pretty much completely unreachable as a result of several inherent flaws in the small-batch media biz�out-of-printness, shady/shaky contact information, impenetrable web pages, flaky label operators, etc� Here�s a small selection of gems rescued from such obscurity:

Julien Ottavi� etudesauxhertz2, [mp3-only release]

Nantes-based laptopper/perucssionist Ottavi�s recent Nervure Magnetique was easily one of the best records of the past year�a sucker-punch scary mixture of ghostly bell tones, nail-biting silences, and insanely dense pools of white noise delivered with Scanners-grade head-exploding intensity. Unfortunately, Ottavi�s web design skills fall well short of his compositional gifts. Locked deep inside the tangle of strange Babelfish French-to-English conversions and aimless links of his homepage is a collection of live recordings and studio experiments that document pre-Nervure sketches. This twenty-minute suite in sine waves and speaker saturation best captures Ottavi�s penchant for sonic extremes and well-placed spatial detail. With only a handful of oscillator tones modulated through speaker clipping and precise layering, Ottavi kinks sine waves into barbed wire or winds them into slow, ringing drones�his arrangements aren�t musical in any conventional sense, but a rigorous sculptural exercise. Like the shortwave static etudes of his occasional collaborator Dion Workman, there�s a touch of cruelty in this investigative project: cool, rational and seemingly unconcerned with the frailties of the listener. Visceral, affective stuff for the strong of ear and heart.

[visit Ottavi�s website here, read Ed Howard’s review of Nervure Magn�tique here, buy Nervure Magn�tique here]

Mike Shiflet and Brent Gutzeit� 11.22.02, [unreleased live recording]

Direct from the archives of my friend, collaborator, and sometimes Stylus scribe Mike Shiflet, this squirrelly set of sputtering test tone generator and contact microphone abuse is an early effort from the oft-recorded and ne�er-released Blanco Ni�o duo. Recorded at Columbus� much-missed Acme Art as part of an evening that also featured equally inspiring sets from Greg Kelley and Mike Bullock (written about with slightly embarrassing breathlessness here, it�s a stark contrast to the crystal-clear tinnitus meditation of Gutzeit�s later solo set and the slow�n�grainy grind of Shiflet�s regular work. In a corner of the musical universe marked by lots of straight-faced endeavors, Shiflet and Gutzeit have mischievous streaks a mile wide and they�re not afraid to make a mess. There�s an undercurrent of brinkmanship that jolts this set from a subtle string throb to a smear of sixty-hertz hum in just under ten minutes�to say nothing of the handful of false starts, false stops, and perhaps even a false middle or two wrangled out along the way. Enough fun that I�ll strain my �journalistic integrity� (*snicker*) to spread the word.

[visit Mike Shiflet�s Gameboy Records website here, visit Brent Gutzeit�s BOXmedia Records website here]

Thomas Ankersmit and Kevin Drumm� Untitled, [Thomas Ankersmit/Kevin Drumm, out-of-print CDr]

The kinda-sorta collaborative CDr between saxophonist Ankersmit and guitar/synth/terror wizard Kevin Drumm is hands-down one of the most sought-after and completely mysterious items on the KD completist circuit. Nobody�s sure who released it, nobody�s sure when it was released, and nobody�s really sure of the degree of Drumm�s involvement (word on the street is that it�s Ankersmit tweaking samples), but it�s still a worthwhile listen as a time-biding treat in the current post-Lurches lull. The trademark bee stings-on-the-pickups guitar scraping is in full effect, crackling atop a gently modulating organ drone presumably lifted from Drumm�s similarly rare Second album. In fact, I�d be tempted to credit the whole thing to Drumm were it not for the speed-phasing of layered electric motor whirring that prefigures two tracks of Ankersmit�s �Niblock on helium� multitracked sax buzz (better heard on this considerably easier-to-find 3�). Bonus mystery points are awarded for the extended silence at close�very Francisco Lopez. If you have any better idea as to who/what is going on here, the comment box is all yours!

[for more information on Ankersmit, visit his Discogs page here, read Joe�s interview with Kevin Drumm here, buy Land of Lurches here]

Note: These tracks are no longer available for download.

Hilary Duff � Inner Strength, [Metamorphosis]

Gavin Mueller and I a few years ago attempted to inaugurate a new musical term onto the landscape entitled shemo, meant to group the number of girls coming out of the woodwork in the wake of Avril Lavigne�s success. As you might expect, it failed. Despite this, I made a mix that helped to trace the lineage of the genre, as I conceived it in my mind, featuring artists like Michelle Branch, Vanessa Carlton and, at the end, this song by Hillary Duff. It�s the only song on the album credited solely to Duff and sounds like it. It�s, structurally and melodically a poor testament to her skills as a songwriter. Despite this, I find it to be one of the strangest and most interesting songs on her debut album.

[check out the ill-fated birth of Shemo, buy Metamorphosis here]

Natalie Imbruglia � Butterflies, [White Lillies Island]

Another artist found on the compilation was one that I recently paid homage to on my now defunct blog. It�s hard to do justice to an album that�s instantly written off and so uniformly under-promoted, though. It makes sense that it would be both of those things, I guess. Imbruglia seemed built for one-hit wonder status and the used CD bins have borne that theory out, being full of Left of the Middle for years now. But the follow-up was something so different and strange that both the label and the shrinking fan-base didn�t know what to do with it. A shame, then, because the album at times almost rivals The Bends in tone and incredible-leap-from-the-first-recordness. �Butterflies� is one of the tracks that made me sit up and take notice on the first listen through the album. The lyrics are a bit more advanced than what you�d expect from the author of �Torn� and, crucially, the chorus is just as catchy. Hopefully now, Edward O and I can continue to spread the cult of Natalie.

[check out a bizarre review of White Lillies Island, buy White Lillies Island here]

Katy Rose � Because I Can, [Because I Can]

Katy hates Avril and all that manufactured garbage. Too bad her songs don�t let her back the talk up with action, eh? This is one of the few songs on the album, though, that rather gets to me. Sure, it�s maudlin and cloying, but there�s something about Rose�s voice that sears right to the heart of the matter. And while I acknowledge you might have to hear the album to get the same effect (it�s all rockers, which barely lets up throughout) I�m a sucker for the melancholic, as you�ll probably find in future Friday installments of this column. And this one hits the spot nearly every time.

[check out a weird MTV�s Three Questions with Katy here, buy Because I Can here]

Note: These tracks are no longer available for download.