After establishing himself as one half of indie duo Emanon and in quickie Stones Throw spots, CA-based Aloe Blacc’s self-produced trials of hip-hop, soothing electro, and sparse salsa rhythms on Shine Through seldom mature in error. His capable pipes on “Want Me” ooze with seductive multiple harmonies dressed in mischievous…

Cohead of and A&R man for Brooklyn’s Embedded label, DJ ESE shares his humble digs with the eloquent Cool Calm Pete, Junk Science, and other independent hip-hop outfits. The Side: Two compilation gathers competent Embedded MCs and friends for a selection of stunning cuts over ESE’s multifaceted, lethargic productions. Babbletron’s…

Between the ebb and flow of organic instrumentals and sporadic twinkling of programmed beats and synths, Munich’s Couch dissembles the commonly intolerable crescendoing moments of postrock. Figur 5’s opener (but surely a set closer), “Gegen Alles Bereit,” roars with multitracked guitar and packs its dense melancholia among hammered single-note-driven licks…

One of 2005’s most satisfying releases came from vintage-equipment-flaunting Boards of Canada; the duo’s third full-length shone amid the year’s electronic-instrument-filled output. Campfire Headphase’s seductive analog textures also featured an occasional guitar strum, which is highlighted straight away on followup Trans Canada Highway, for the six-song EP opens with one…

Though there are still only two axe-wielding gents at the helm, Growing masks its drone rock on Color Wheel as if a stage-filling band is mulling around for at least six minutes at a time, peaking in spotty, shimmering crests of amp buzz (“Blue Angels”) and chunks of thick call-and-answer…

Like baked, cheating poker buddies, California beat rearranger Nobody (Elvin Estela) and Mystic Chords of Memory (Christopher Gunst, Jen Cohen) mesh perfectly on Tree Colored See … in a blend of acid-trip high jinks and astute drum sampling. Though Gunst might be better known for his desert ditties as the…

Kaito’s eighth Kompakt release celebrates his relationship with deep house and trance in a lovely sequence of epic-length ambient segments steeped in welcoming synth washes, speaker-switching swirls, and unobtrusive beat touches. Hundred Million Light Years swims into more than an hour of play, with grand, sweeping finishes that push Kaito’s…

Mike Milosh’s 2004 debut was rife with smitten, electronically generated balladry. The Toronto native crafted You Make Me Feel around bubbling, understated beats and sunkissed R&B vocal melodies, singing the praises of a burgeoning love in his life. When the courtship disintegrated, he wrote Meme, a considerably bleaker diary entry…

Though Global Communication’s Mark Pritchard might have borrowed Dabrye’s “No Child of God (Instrumental)” for Fabric 26’s striking opener, as he borrowed the records used in his impressively selected end of the mix, it still might be the best choice here. A healthy interest in lesser-discussed MCs spices up Pritchard’s…

Shrill, darkened-corridor atmospherics and nearly medicinal synth arrangements intersect on Because We Can, the rather experimental debut full-length from Australia’s Lostep. Oddly “Burma,” the most recognizable track here thanks to its inclusion on Sasha’s Involver in 2004, is the lot’s most accessible in its vibrant vocal snippets and crisp beat…

Multimedia artist Takagi Masakatsu works in an ambient medium on Journal for People, his third CD and second DVD release for Washington, D.C.’s Carpark label. The audio half of Journal stays within miniature-sounding orchestrations concocted mostly of piano melodies, varied instrumentation, and field recordings that get chopped and looped in…

Whispered vocal clusters, busy laptop beats, and an occasional brass arrangement drive the electronic pop pieces on Music A.M.’s third album. Unwound from the Woods was mixed in the Welsh mountains, and bears lofty, expansive psychedelia in its eleven sleepy tracks — notably in the swirling chime coda of “Ten…

The type of woozy, warbled guitar sounds that pervade some of Boards of Canada’s Campfire Headphase are the same brand that induced Boards member Marcus Eoin to help Bibio secure a record deal. Stephen Wilkinson, operating here as experimentalist Bibio, twists the classically arranged guitar-based songwriting on Hand Cranked into…

The ten-year anniversary of the DJ-Kicks series is celebrated in DJ-Kicks: The Exclusives, a scouring of Berlin’s !K7 respectable back catalogue. The results deal in a getting-the-guests-in-the-living-room-stoned type of downbeat as well as in coke-fueled club-floor dry-humpers. Standouts hold down The Exclusives in the first few cuts — in the…

Though the coarse, forceful techno on Metalism is mostly for the dance floor, DJs Chris Liebing and Jochem Paap also generate a sense of brutal, urbanlike decay that would send most Spectral junkies back to the comfort of their muscle relaxers and Geoff White twelve-inches. Collabs 3000: Metalism pairs up…

Orlando’s DJ Baby Anne delivers the breaks end of Assault & Battery, and her fixation on deep, winding Miami bass results in a slightly harder product than Jen Lasher’s electro half. The squealing laser tag bursts of Product 01’s “I Like It Now” are sandwiched by Anne’s own “Freaks Groove”…

Behind one of his several pen names, Detroit techno dealer Matthew Dear excels as Audion, pushing distant, machine-sounding atmospherics over skeletal beats on Suckfish. Dear plumbs even darker caverns than those explored on his previous effort, 2004’s Backstroke, and the swap-out of vocals for brief, deeply coded snippets of spoken…

With a barrage of lurid rhymes, NYC’s Cage spits the sort of storyboard rhymes on Hell’s Winter that sound ripped from an underground graphic novel. The dreary warzone backdrops come from El-P, RJD2, and Blockhead, and their nimble, diesel-charged compositions help drive Cage’s reckless imagination over the edge. The foolish…

The acid-spiked electronic dub that closes the second half of Selecta One bodes well for the Hacky Sack-hoarding, poncho-clad hippie types, but its glitches and spacy meanderings might leave a sour taste on even the most stoned of tongues. The disc pits producers Jason Kennedy (Polycubist) against Kenneth Gibson (DubLoner)…

I Self Divine’s latest album, Self Destruction, sounds like the sonic equivalent of road rage: angry, violent, yet ultimately annoying and pointless. With a self-assured delivery that resembles Brother Ali or Fat Joe, the former MC for Atlanta’s Micranots delivers angst-ridden blasts of slogan-heavy choruses. Meanwhile Destruction’s production is steeped…

The boring middle-ground crap that plagues electronica and instrumental hip-hop has no such effect on And Everything Else …, the third outing from LA beatmaker Elvin “Nobody” Estela. He bridges dusty psychedelic loops and Nineties hip-hop beats with intricacy and restraint so that this disc doesn’t lean in either direction:…

Out Hud answers the oft-heard call for unpretentious dance music with fevered electronic misbehaving on Let Us Never Speak of It Again. One of the tracks, the aptly titled “The Song So Good They Named It Thrice,” exposes the five-piece’s trouble when it comes to developing witty song names, but…