London�s amusingly suave and sarcastic quartet The Monochrome Set was fronted by Bid (vocals), Lester Square (guitar) and Andy Warren (bass), three of the legions who had once played with Adam Ant in bands formed in and around the scene at the Hornsey College of Art in the late 70s. With the help of producer Bob Sargeant, the Monochrome Set twisted uncommon source material (polkas, calypso, etc.) into cabaret-inspired dance numbers. Fortunately, the results were untainted by seriousness�significant at a time when to get a gig it helped to have at least one member on suicide watch. Originally snatched up by Rough Trade, only to spend most of their career label hopping, they released some of their best material early in their career.

Arguably their best song �Eine Symphonie des Grauens� (A Symphony of Violence), from their second single, is named for the subtitle of F.W. Murnau�s classic silent film and the first vampire movie of all time, Nosferatu. In it, Bid sings a first person narrative as a vampire addressing his victim, in his signature urbane tone with a hint of diabolical intent.

Before future Cherry Red labelmate Tracey Thorn got her hands on it, �Goodbye Joe,� appeared on the Monochrome Set�s first album The Strange Boutique. This might be the only time Bid ever broke character and showed some genuine emotion, even if it was, ostensibly, thanks to a character from a Spaghetti Western.

On their second album, Love Zombies, �B-I-D Spells Bid� showcases their maturing sound and again highlights the wry lyrical talents of narcissist/lead singer Bid. The organ work lends the song a mod flavor not absent from much of their work, from the earliest singles to the late works that often got them called �the poor man�s XTC.�

Subtle and always arch, peaking on their sophomore album only to retreat into relative obscurity soon after, it�s not hard to tell why the Monochrome Set were forgotten when the indie rock canon was being consecrated. With all the early-80s mining that�s been going on lately, it�s just hard to understand why they haven�t been rediscovered yet.

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Cleveland rocks!

Pere Ubu began gigging around Cleveland in 1975. Drew Carey, from whose show’s opening credits the above line is taken (for those of you who avoid television like the proverbial plague), would have been an apparently-troubled 17 years old�fatherless, directionless, and living in depressed, post-industrial, mid-seventies Cleveland; in other words, the perfect primordial bog in which a jagged, pissed-off odd-punk stinkweed might grow and flourish. Apparently he’s a long-time trumpeter and a pretty decent accordion player. So the mind wanders, doesn’t it kiddies? Imagine if you will The Ubu, big-timers�by that point, only-timers�in the ClePunk scene, play yet another Thursday night show at the Pirate’s Cove, for about 30 or 40 off-the-clock dock-workers. First opener: a scrappy bunch of punker teens�one on guitar, one on bass, one on drums, and one stocky fella in jeans and a t-shirt on trumpet, blasting marching-band riffology in between having to pick his glasses up off the floor. They fell off when he just rocked too hard. They were unmusical, and they were riveting, and they were called the Huddy Bollies. The direct connection between Drew Carey and Pere Ubu ends in my mind�perhaps he’s a fan, who knows?�but, oh the possibilities!

And now we backtrack, to 1896. No, make that 1893. French author Alfred Jarry�raconteur, cruel absurdist, dwarf�pens an essay called “Guignol,” in which he introduces his notion of pataphysics. Teasing out the meanings of rules by aligning with their exceptions; finding absolute truth in its contradiction; seeking everything in nothing. And so on, more or less. OK, now it’s 1896. Jarry premieres his five-act magnum opus at Theatre de l’Oeuvre in Paris. In it, a man�Pere Ubu�is nothing, is a slave, is King of Poland, is a slave, and is nothing. Jarry invents profanity (”Merdre!“), and Ubu’s army just kills and kills again, to the drumbeat of monotone line readings and scene-setting placards. Then, in 1975, Cleveland loses its guiding underground rock light when Rocket From the Tombs unceremoniously calls it quits. They were hard, wild, and unpredictable. Their gargantuan lead singer David Thomas (nee Crocus Behemoth, who bore a not-inconsiderable resemblance to a young Orson Wells with a bad haircut) and normal-sized guitarist Peter Laughner were joined by Tom Herman and Tim Wright on bass and guitar (they’d switch off, they’d come and go), Allen Ravenstine on an obscure analog synthesizer (him too), and Scott Krauss (gone for good around the early ’90s). They thought Pere Ubu was a good name�references an obscure proto-Dada work, veritably trips off the tongue�and began their headfirst march into geek-crit obscurity.

OK, that isn’t exactly fair; however, it is true that their first four-and-a-half albums�the EP Datapanik In the Year Zero, The Modern Dance, Dub Housing, New Picnic Time, and The Art of Walking�were made, with apparent glee and at the height of their powers, when they practically couldn’t buy an audience, between 1976 and 1981. This was a post-Captain Beefheart world, the very pinnacle of the Reign of Zappa, but these guys were too weird, too angular, and too absurd for even those crowds. Their first ever recorded song, “30 Seconds Over Tokyo” from the Datapanik E.P., might evoke an image of WWII bombers overhead (what, just me?), but its lyrics would be pure Middle-Earth if they made any sense; something about “a little dragon lost in time,” and “waves in an underground sea,” moaned through he largest sinuses this side of the Mississippi. Laughner pounds in with a few sharp chords, working them around until hitting a several-minute solo that, magically, is the same played forward as it is backward (no, not really, but it might as well be). For all practical purposes, they’re something of a jam band, massaging a single hook into a twisted image of itself, then unravelling it back. But unlike the empty proficiency of most “improvised rock” (sorry, everyone), Ubu at their best pull hooks out of nowhere, to the point where they can take them for granted. Take Dub Housing’s serpentine “Caligari’s Mirror”; slowed to a crawl for much of its length, and smeared with all manner of noise and logy as hell, with a pair of few-note riffs entwining, until it comes bursting out of its seams suddenly with a kitchen-sink chorus of yelps, Stax-style bass, and bar-band piano. Or “Say Goodbye” from 1988’s The Tenement Year, with Thomas’s high-pitched whine tied to a basically-trad rock line, and the terrifying compressed guitar solo in the middle, ending it all by breaking apart into squeaks and wails, and swirling down the drain. Somehow, they’re still a going concern, if only recording every few years or so, but as 1998’s Pennsylvania attested, at they’re best they’re every bit as vital now as they were in their supposed glory days; “Drive” pushes forever forward under the power of Steve Mehlman’s pounding drums and Tom Herman’s powerhouse punk-style riffing, only slowing down long enough for an ample coda, but rocking�as straighforward as they’ve ever gotten, and as close as, I would think, they’d ever be willing to get�in a manner befitting the shortest, cruelest absurdists.

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Cologne-based Braun (and The Mob) harness a playfully irksome palette of electronic noises, samples and funk superlatives. With song titles like �Da Haaaah! Da Huuuuh! Da Ph***! (Need to Have the B***!)� and �Da F***! of Kopenhagen (Abu Ghureib Styles),� the pair�s latest album, As the Veneer of Dumbness Starts to Fade, is securely on par with the Kevin Blechdoms, Matthew Herberts and Matmoses of the world. You can find poot-warbled horn samples as well as barely audible obscenities scattered about the duration of �Explosions in B.E.I.G.E. (Nothing Has Changed).�

[buy stuff here]

One may not think to look south of the border for quality ambient acts, but E. Lebleu proves that such things exist and will have you scouring old ambient mailing list digests for more of the like. Lebleu�s debut full length, Spirituals, focuses on both IDM and glitchy beatless ambience. The album�s opener, �If,� is an example of the latter, a four-minute-plus ambient droner and the most minimal track on the album.

[buy stuff here]

Rephlex mystery man Arpanet fills the void between Detroit techno and abstract electronics with his latest full length, Quantum Transposition. While most of the album tends to be rather grounded in beats and percussion, �Entangled Photons� is an elusive beatless affair. Just over one minute, the track is essentially a repeated loop with subtle changes applied to each repetition. While no beat is present, the track somehow remains rhythmic and pulse driven.

[buy stuff here]

French duo Aswefall overlap the empty space between Parisian folk, dance-punk and Roxy Music-inspired pop/rock. The eight tracks of their debut, Bleed, offer plenty of variety, bouncing around from genre to genre. The single, �Ride,� is less along the folksy side of things, and more along the side of polite, toe-tappin� disco-rock. Never loud or aggressive like some of its peers, Aswefall proposes more of an easygoing answer to the genre. Remixes of the track by Chlo� and Der Schmeisser on the 12-inch single. Tour dates below (all two of them).

10/31 Paris (@ Tryptique)
11/05 Bruxelles (@ Dirty Dancing)

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Super producer combo Flanger consists of Uwe Schmidt (aka Atom Heart, Atom�, Senior Coconut, etc.) and Burnt Friedman. Currently represented by German label Nonplace, Flanger continues its knack for jazz-inspired electronics and vice versa. On first listen, �How Long Is the Wrong Way?� may sound like a straight jazz cut, but upon closer inspections, you�ll begin to notice all the electronic noodlings popping up here and there. A track of this quality makes me wonder why these guys ever left Ninja Tune.

[buy stuff here]

Cologne-based Braun (and The Mob) harness a playfully irksome palette of electronic noises, samples and funk superlatives. With song titles like �Da Haaaah! Da Huuuuh! Da Ph***! (Need to Have the B***!)� and �Da F***! of Kopenhagen (Abu Ghureib Styles),� the pair�s latest album, As the Veneer of Dumbness Starts to Fade, is securely on par with the Kevin Blechdoms, Matthew Herberts and Matmoses of the world. You can find poot-warbled horn samples as well as barely audible obscenities scattered about the duration of �Explosions in B.E.I.G.E. (Nothing Has Changed).�

[buy stuff here]

One may not think to look south of the border for quality ambient acts, but E. Lebleu proves that such things exist and will have you scouring old ambient mailing list digests for more of the like. Lebleu�s debut full length, Spirituals, focuses on both IDM and glitchy beatless ambience. The album�s opener, �If,� is an example of the latter, a four-minute-plus ambient droner and the most minimal track on the album.

[buy stuff here]

Rephlex mystery man Arpanet fills the void between Detroit techno and abstract electronics with his latest full length, Quantum Transposition. While most of the album tends to be rather grounded in beats and percussion, �Entangled Photons� is an elusive beatless affair. Just over one minute, the track is essentially a repeated loop with subtle changes applied to each repetition. While no beat is present, the track somehow remains rhythmic and pulse driven.

[buy stuff here]

French duo Aswefall overlap the empty space between Parisian folk, dance-punk and Roxy Music-inspired pop/rock. The eight tracks of their debut, Bleed, offer plenty of variety, bouncing around from genre to genre. The single, �Ride,� is less along the folksy side of things, and more along the side of polite, toe-tappin� disco-rock. Never loud or aggressive like some of its peers, Aswefall proposes more of an easygoing answer to the genre. Remixes of the track by Chlo� and Der Schmeisser on the 12-inch single. Tour dates below (all two of them).

10/31 Paris (@ Tryptique)
11/05 Bruxelles (@ Dirty Dancing)

[buy stuff here]

Super producer combo Flanger consists of Uwe Schmidt (aka Atom Heart, Atom�, Senior Coconut, etc.) and Burnt Friedman. Currently represented by German label Nonplace, Flanger continues its knack for jazz-inspired electronics and vice versa. On first listen, �How Long Is the Wrong Way?� may sound like a straight jazz cut, but upon closer inspections, you�ll begin to notice all the electronic noodlings popping up here and there. A track of this quality makes me wonder why these guys ever left Ninja Tune.

[buy stuff here]

On a very special Stypod, we present an exclusive Chris Lemon-Red mix for your perusal. Tip!

01: Bun B - Draped Up (feat. Lil Keke)
02: Kenika - Drag A Bitch Out the Club
03: Black Jak - Ride & Swerve (feat. Project Pat)
04: GRiT Boys - Drank In Ya System (feat. Paul Wall)
05: Thrill da Playa - Yo Chevy (Remix) (feat. T-Pain & Doughboy)
06: Yo Gotti - Grey Goose (feat. Young Jeezy)
07: Trae - Swang (feat. Fat Pat & H.A.W.K.)

[visit L-Red here]

Ask someone about Tacoma, Washington, and they might draw a blank. And it�d be hard to blame them for doing so. Tacoma is not a large city, nor is it heavily populated. In many eyes, it�s not even that important. It�s a lumber town, much like Seattle in its early days. Tacoma, however, was supposed to be the city in Washington State. However, when the rallying cry of �Yukon gold!� came down from Alaska, it was Seattle that became the hopeful hub, and Tacoma was lost to the limelight of history.

At one point, I considered it my home.

Tacoma might be recognized by fans of the films 10 Things I Hate About You or Volunteers. The high school in the former is Stadium High, which my father attended, while John Candy�s character in the latter mentions that he�s from Tacoma at any opportunity. If you�ve been there, you�ll definitely recognize Tacoma from its smell, known locally as �the Aroma.� Every time I drive down I-5, rounding the corner where the signs proclaim loudly and with false optimism, �Welcome to Tacoma!� I can smell it. It is home now, primarily, to commuters and those who eke out a living based on its proximity to the military-industrial center of the Pacific Northwest. Tacoma housed two serial killers (Ted Bundy and the Beltway Sniper, John Muhammed), one abusive father (Bing Crosby), and one monocular glass artist (Dale Chihuly). It is also the professed hometown of one gorgeous alt-country siren: Neko Case.

Her paean to Tacoma, �Thrice All American,� begins with a description of the city: a �dusty old jewel in the South Puget Sound,� a �sour and used up old place.� These observations are, to say the very least, accurate. It is now a dreary shell of a city, living in the shadow of its more prominent neighbor to the north. While Seattle brought forth Microsoft, Starbucks, and Boeing, as well as musical efforts from Jimi Hendrix to Sir Mix-a-Lot, Tacoma has engendered significantly less. The Tacoma Dome, its major concert venue, mainly hosts monster truck rallies and Christian revivals.

Case goes on with a sad and lonely truth: �There was hope in the train yard of something inspired.� The transcontinental railroad connected with Tacoma, not Seattle. Barring the Yukon Gold Rush, Tacoma was supposed to be the railroad hub of the area, akin to Chicago, but with a major Pacific port, making it more like San Francisco. Both of these cities grew to be dynamic and influential while Tacoma stagnated. The trains, motionless and rusting, were the last best hope that Tacoma had. It once was the �City of Destiny,� a place where the mountains and forest met the sea, a sacred place to the Puyallup tribe and a geographically advantageous area for national and global shipping lanes. Now, Case�s observation that �Buildings are empty like ghettos or ghost-towns,� is hauntingly real; industrial centers exist almost solely to provide cover for drug deals and gang violence.

It is difficult to juxtapose the now-polished beauty and grace of Neko Case with the hollow dream of a city that never truly was. But, like Tacoma, Neko Case was once full of fiery passion and raw potential. Her own voice is a testament to that blaze, a sultry sound capable of conveying both crippling heartbreak and caustic venom. While Tacoma may have stagnated, Case utilized her potential. She made it out from under the crushing history of failure and of mere survival that Tacoma has come to signify. Only 20% of Tacoma residents graduate from college, compared with 25% nationally. Seattle�s rate is 36%. Most of Tacoma�s high school graduates either move or join the military. Fort Lewis, McChord Air Force Base, or the naval base in Bremerton are not far off, and provide easy ways out. Case herself moved to Vancouver, B.C., where stardom and the New Pornographers would not be too long off.

My parents made the inevitable drive forty miles north to Seattle, where they would settle and raise their own family. While I still make the occasional drive south to visit grandparents, uncles, and cousins who have not made it out, Tacoma, like Neko Case, I also sadly neglect you. So, whether or not you have been to Tacoma, whether or not you even care about Tacoma�s past or future, when you listen to �Thrice All American,� remember that you are listening to more than just a song about some second-rate city. You are listening to an elegy, a bittersweet ode to my (and Neko�s) home.

[buy stuff here]

Ask someone about Tacoma, Washington, and they might draw a blank. And it�d be hard to blame them for doing so. Tacoma is not a large city, nor is it heavily populated. In many eyes, it�s not even that important. It�s a lumber town, much like Seattle in its early days. Tacoma, however, was supposed to be the city in Washington State. However, when the rallying cry of �Yukon gold!� came down from Alaska, it was Seattle that became the hopeful hub, and Tacoma was lost to the limelight of history.

At one point, I considered it my home.

Tacoma might be recognized by fans of the films 10 Things I Hate About You or Volunteers. The high school in the former is Stadium High, which my father attended, while John Candy�s character in the latter mentions that he�s from Tacoma at any opportunity. If you�ve been there, you�ll definitely recognize Tacoma from its smell, known locally as �the Aroma.� Every time I drive down I-5, rounding the corner where the signs proclaim loudly and with false optimism, �Welcome to Tacoma!� I can smell it. It is home now, primarily, to commuters and those who eke out a living based on its proximity to the military-industrial center of the Pacific Northwest. Tacoma housed two serial killers (Ted Bundy and the Beltway Sniper, John Muhammed), one abusive father (Bing Crosby), and one monocular glass artist (Dale Chihuly). It is also the professed hometown of one gorgeous alt-country siren: Neko Case.

Her paean to Tacoma, �Thrice All American,� begins with a description of the city: a �dusty old jewel in the South Puget Sound,� a �sour and used up old place.� These observations are, to say the very least, accurate. It is now a dreary shell of a city, living in the shadow of its more prominent neighbor to the north. While Seattle brought forth Microsoft, Starbucks, and Boeing, as well as musical efforts from Jimi Hendrix to Sir Mix-a-Lot, Tacoma has engendered significantly less. The Tacoma Dome, its major concert venue, mainly hosts monster truck rallies and Christian revivals.

Case goes on with a sad and lonely truth: �There was hope in the train yard of something inspired.� The transcontinental railroad connected with Tacoma, not Seattle. Barring the Yukon Gold Rush, Tacoma was supposed to be the railroad hub of the area, akin to Chicago, but with a major Pacific port, making it more like San Francisco. Both of these cities grew to be dynamic and influential while Tacoma stagnated. The trains, motionless and rusting, were the last best hope that Tacoma had. It once was the �City of Destiny,� a place where the mountains and forest met the sea, a sacred place to the Puyallup tribe and a geographically advantageous area for national and global shipping lanes. Now, Case�s observation that �Buildings are empty like ghettos or ghost-towns,� is hauntingly real; industrial centers exist almost solely to provide cover for drug deals and gang violence.

It is difficult to juxtapose the now-polished beauty and grace of Neko Case with the hollow dream of a city that never truly was. But, like Tacoma, Neko Case was once full of fiery passion and raw potential. Her own voice is a testament to that blaze, a sultry sound capable of conveying both crippling heartbreak and caustic venom. While Tacoma may have stagnated, Case utilized her potential. She made it out from under the crushing history of failure and of mere survival that Tacoma has come to signify. Only 20% of Tacoma residents graduate from college, compared with 25% nationally. Seattle�s rate is 36%. Most of Tacoma�s high school graduates either move or join the military. Fort Lewis, McChord Air Force Base, or the naval base in Bremerton are not far off, and provide easy ways out. Case herself moved to Vancouver, B.C., where stardom and the New Pornographers would not be too long off.

My parents made the inevitable drive forty miles north to Seattle, where they would settle and raise their own family. While I still make the occasional drive south to visit grandparents, uncles, and cousins who have not made it out, Tacoma, like Neko Case, I also sadly neglect you. So, whether or not you have been to Tacoma, whether or not you even care about Tacoma�s past or future, when you listen to �Thrice All American,� remember that you are listening to more than just a song about some second-rate city. You are listening to an elegy, a bittersweet ode to my (and Neko�s) home.

[buy stuff here]

The apocalypse is over. The sun sometimes peeks through the thick blanket of radioactive smog that encompasses earth. Survivors disperse and repopulate earth. Civilizations emerge. Synth-psych ensues.

An obvious choice, perhaps, but Gary Numan�s early work with the Tubeway Army might just be the apex of synth-psych. Conceived according to a concept so complicated it would take much too long to fully elaborate here, Replicas is an album about a post-apocalyptic world where cyborgs called �machmen� reign and where humans who dare challenge their regime are labeled �crazies.� On �Down in the Park,� Numan tells the story of how the richest among the humans watch the weakest get maimed and devoured by the machmen, gladiator-style, from their windows overlooking the park.

[buy stuff here]

One of Factory Records� more obscure acts, Section 25 spent most of their career being compared to Joy Division and dismissed offhand. Their third album, From the Hip, boasts production from none other than New Order�s Bernard Sumner and marks a huge departure from their first two more straightforward, krautrock-plundering full-lengths. �Looking from a Hilltop� finds them, mid-trip, floating through space over mountainous terrain on the new Earth in one of synth-psych�s prettier, more contemplative forays.

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Speaking of Factory Records and pretty, Antena also had both going for them. Released on Factory�s sister-label Benelux, Isabelle Powaga, Sylvain Fasy, and Pascale Moiroud�s only album, Camino del Sol, went deep into bossa nova territory with more than a hint of South American psychedelic flavor at a time when, as the Numero Group later put it, no one wanted to hear either. �Achilles� sounds like synth-psych lounge music written for the one beach house on the Riviera that�s left standing after the dawning of the new Ice Age.

[buy stuff here]

OMD are usually bracketed off with Simple Minds and Wang Chung in the �John Hughes movie soundtrack music� category. Anyone who heard them before �If You Leave� was the soundtrack to Ducky Dale�s romantic exploits knows just how unfair this is. Factory�s legendary graphic artist Peter Saville designed a few of their covers, and Martin Hannett produced a portion of their early work. On �Red Frame/White Light� from their self-titled debut, OMD sound like a slightly less bent Kraftwerk who discovered the ruins of Studio 54 somewhere in the post-apocalyptic rubble and constructed a sound based on what they imagined disco must have sounded like.

[buy stuff here]

Known in the states thanks only to that �Oh Yeah� song from Ferris Bueller�s Day Off, Yello were a duo that consisted of (I kid you not) Swiss millionaire-industrialist/ professional gambler Dieter Meier and composer Borris Blank. In 1980, Yello signed with the Residents� label, Ralph Records, and scored a considerable dance hit with �Bostitch� from their first album, Solid Pleasure. By 1983, they�d moved onto even bigger and better things with You Gotta Say Yes to Another Excess, released by Elektra. Its first sleazy, woozy, and atmospheric track, �I Love You,� serves as synth-psych�s first (and possibly last) post-apocalyptic disco love song.

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Once upon a time, there was a book, and that book was called The Mouse and His Child, by Russell Hoban. There are a pair of clockwork mice, a father and son, and the son longs, desperately, for a loving family life with the marmish elephant and the ball-balancing seal, in the magical doll house across the counter. They’re purchased by a family and broken by the cat; they are picked up and repaired by a tramp, who releases them into their adventure. There’s a murderous rat who uses wind-up toys for slave-labor, and a prophesying frog. And then there’s The Caws of Art, a philosophical experimental-theater troupe currently producing a play called The Last Visible Dog. It’s based on the label on an old can of Bonzo Dog Food, in which a dog looks wistfully at a can of Bonzo Dog Food, whose label has a picture of a dog looking wistfully at a can of Bonzo Dog Food, whose label has a picture, and on and on and on. The troupe’s spiritual leader, C. Serpentina, thinks it his crowning achievement. What doesn’t it mean?, he says, It just goes on and on, can mean anything and everything, depending on who you are and what your last visible dog is.

And on and on. From a vantage atop the highest hill in Indievania, one may lay eyes over hill and dale, past ocean and mountain, searching out the little pockets of unfettered creativity in the most unexpected places, marked by great glowing beacons limning the horizon. You’ve got beatific utopians droning to the big sky in New Zealand; crusty, beardy young skronk-hippies and their Queens loft parties; Finland’s ever-growing population of pixies and wood-nymphs; those noise-brats in Michigan and their quaint little cassette tapes. And then there’s Providence, RI, home not only to End-times shred-gods Lightning Bolt, but also a humble little out-label called Last Visible Dog. Equal parts traditional record label and way station and distribution hub for obscure little CD-R makers like PseudoArcana, Secret Eye, and Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, it was founded in Lincoln, NE in 1996, originally to release the works of label-head Chris Moon and his band MCMS (the Midwest Center for Mass Spectrometry). At the time, LVD made its name releasing hand-crafted limited-editions by the likes of Birchville Cat Motel (C-Psi-P proprietor Campbell Kneale), New Weird Minneapolis quartet Entrance, and early records by the now-famed Jeweled Antler Collective. After MCMS’s seeming dissolution�the label released a career retrospective in 2004�Moon began to focus on proper, manufactured releases, with lovely covers and lovelier music.

On their adventures through label-dom, these little upstarts, these plucky little underdogs, must band together in some sort of united front, an aesthetic epoxy binding the logs on the idyllic, vine-covered cabin next to the lake that… um… sorry, I was miles away; not because I’m a horrible drunk (though I am), but because LVD focuses mainly on a certain brand of drone-und-drang, a more textured, dynamic, and dramatic form of drone music, taking Tony Conrad and his Theater of Eternal Music (rather than La Monte Young) as a starting point and touchstone, and revolving around a set of artists who are bringing a new urgency to the music without sacrificing its vaunted hypnotic qualities. The front-and-center star (in my eyes anyway) is Campbell Kneale; as Birchville Cat Motel (his song and album titles are also all composed largely of random word combinations), he unspools lengthy ribbons of texture and noise, largely with samplers, guitars, and the occasional violin. His 2004 album Beautiful Speck Trumph remains perhaps the label’s greatest single release�a searing, brain-melting two-and-a-half hours of cloud-skimming highs. It’s not all drone�Japan’s LSD March may bring some of the same tension-building methods to the table, but their focus is on an eerie sort of low-key, guitar-driven, folk-doom-metal hybrid. But what other label would release a three-disc set of fried circuits, empty samplers, and ghostly guitars by Finland’s Uton (Jani Hirvonen); occasionally the instruments will drop out, and it sounds like he’s playing the very weather. Three-disc sounds weak? How about their recent six-disc compilation�31 different artists, seven-and-a-half hours�The Invisible Pyramid: Elegy. It’s a glorious collection, that feels a bit like a summation, a best-of-so-far (though all of the material was recorded specifically for this)�not a dog among them, mostly, with specifically good contributions from BCM and Uton, as well as Philadelphia shredders Bardo Pond, psychey-concrete madness from Ashtray Navigations, and a dead-quiet-to-horrifically loud sea of sound from My Cat Is an Alien.

Annie � Heartbeat (Alan Braxe Mix)

Every relationship has an arc, a story behind it. Imagine, if you please, a meeting between two individuals who find themselves undeniably attracted to each other. They�re in a crowded club, sipping drinks and dancing slowly. The young woman doesn�t even know her companion�s name, but yet there is a powerful magnetism drawing them ever closer. This situation is, of course, the narrative arc of Annie�s �Heartbeat,� and the music informs the event just as much as her words do. Alan Braxe takes this track and, somehow, gives it even more sex appeal than the original. The thumping bass and snare of his mix is muddier, sultrier than Annie�s version, the overall length nearly double. I envision our pair (out of great love for John Darnielle and a certain authorial prescience about where this piece is going, let�s call them the Alpha Couple) exploring their attraction, growing equally curious about what lies beneath both their projected fa�ades as well as their clothes.

The Wrens � I�ve Made Enough Friends

This might be the best song ever written about the first night of a relationship. Of course, I might be biased. I fantasize that every encounter I have might somehow resemble the graphic yet delicate portrait of desire that Charlie Bissell creates. Now that Annie and Charlie, our Alpha Couple have gone back to Annie�s place, some serious heavy petting is going to occur. Bissell asks, �Are we done with all others?� Even the title of the song alone implies finality, a forgoing of everyone else for this one person. Never mind that you can hardly understand the lyrics, as dense as the production is (On a side note, it is criminal that Secaucus isn�t seeing a reissue, and that Alan Meltzer won�t just let things go, etc.). The point here is that first night, that sexual catharsis that forces one to consider the possibilities of love, and the frenetic stream of consciousness that the Wrens provide is exactly the medium needed to convey it. Now that they have that forbidden knowledge of each other�s bodies, what mystery is left to sustain the relationship?

Spoon � Me and the Bean

Our honeymoon track finds Charlie blending with Britt Daniel (forming� Charlie Daniel?) into one comfortably cool character. Spoon�s sparse production style gives us the space necessary to ponder the nature of our Alpha Couple, with piano and tambourine flourishes accentuating rather than distracting. The void allows Daniel to pose us his dilemma: why is this girl reading Tarot cards beautiful? Whether it is the implicit promise of, �You�ll bring me youth when I am old,� or the romantic, near-obsessive notion that, �I have your blood inside my heart,� there is something about this relationship that gels. Spoon has always been a mysterious band to me, albeit a mystery that vaults them into my top few groups. The more I think about it, the more I am sure that the key to the puzzle is the quality of anticipation. Just as our Alpha Couple may have anticipated the moment when they made enough friends, every production detail in Spoon�s catalogue is a sonic interpretation of waiting for something significant to happen. This intangible quality, especially in Girls Can Tell, makes it perfect for this tale. Our male protagonist is anticipating the moment when he will understand why this woman is important to him.

The Mountain Goats � No Children

Most of us desire happy endings. We�d like for things to work out for nearly everybody, for people to get what they desire. Happy endings, however, will elude us today. For our Alpha Couple, what they eventually want is nothing more than decay and violent destruction. Ironically, John Darnielle combines his devastating invective with a bright, upbeat piano melody. I respect Mr. Darnielle as perhaps the best songwriter of our era, and this song shows him at his finest. Charlie Daniel-Darnielle, our amalgamated hero, will not find his happy ending. �I hope you die, I hope we both die,� is his cry now, desperately aching for release from his marital bed. This song is a brilliant vial of caustic acid, searing any possibility of repair and leaving the only connecting factor in the relationship a drunken smoldering despair, a mutually-recognized desire to drag the other down into ruin. The song is professed by Darnielle to be about his own fictional Alpha Couple, a picture-perfect representation of the fury of dwindling love themselves. Annie and Charlie have hit their tragic peak, a pinnacle of effete rage and repressed aggression. In a twisted way, it is admirable. But only just.

Feist � Let It Die

It�s only appropriate that we end our story of Annie and Charlie, our Alpha Couple, with an offering from the Arts and Crafts collective. (See, there�s an alphabetical connection!) Also, it�s about time we returned to the female perspective. We�ve been spending the last three songs talking about things from Charlie Daniel-Darnielle�s point of view, and poor Annie Feist has been ignored. �Let It Die� is a bittersweet companion to �No Children,� not so much a pining to see the relationship dead as it is a recognition of the fact that it already is. The true tragedy, as crooned to us elegantly by Leslie Feist, is, �The saddest part of a broken heart isn�t the ending so much as the start.� From the moment that Annie saw Charlie at the party, dancing with him without even knowing his name, the relationship was destined for failure. This is a heavy blow to take, but with Feist�s beautiful voice I�m slightly assuaged. The beautiful lounge-pop that she conjures up with beau Gonzalez� sparse production is a painkiller to the quiet desperation that her lyrics carry. Our Alpha Couple is no more, a footnote to each other�s histories. Charlie will hang her up with the rest of his ex-girl collection, and Annie will find another piece of gum to chew on. C�est la vie. Que sera, sera. Life marches inexorably on. And all that jazz.

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