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."

There are few clues as to the nature of the French play that this CD isa soundtrack for. Although it is described as an adaptation ofSophocles' Oedipus Tyrant,the Foreign language liner notes and sparse interiors depicted in thebooklet point toward an effort to take the music out of its context asa commission.

Growing had the good fortune of releasing their album The Soul of the Rainbow and the Harmony of Lightlast year in the midst of an underground scene that had lately becomeobsessed on the low-end doom-laden guitar drones proffered by bandslike Sunn O))), Earth, and Birchville Cat Motel. Growing's album wasunfairly lumped into this loose grouping of artists, which theassociation with producer Rex Ritter (of Fontanelle/Jessamine and SunnO))) involvements) didn't really help.

Freiband is the solo project of Frans de Waard, one half of Dutchexperimental duo Beequeen. For past outings under the Freiband name, deWaard experimented with Asmus Tietchens-inspired tape-scratching,adapting the techniques into a digital medium and appropriating popmusic from the 1970s and 80s to make a unique form of experimentalglitch plunderphonia. This cute little 3" CD takes this idea a bitfurther, using source material from the Beatles' sole instrumentaltrack "Flying" from Magical Mystery Tour,reducing it to its barest structure and recomposing it for metallic,glitch-y pops and rustling undercurrents of shapeless drone.

Greh, Chondritic Sound's founder, has gotten a lot of attention for hisown noise work, but until hearing this I had no idea why. Death Tone,an album whose name I couldn't even get right, failed to impress mebecause it felt like one continuous spin through the same material thatwas introduced in the first five minutes of its one and only track. Sand Beasts,on the other hand, is a devastating trip through the least flatteringof sounds and, in the end, feels like it could be a recording of theugliest animals on the planet mating.

Alexander Hacke's new solo album Sanctuary bears some of the hallmarks of Einstürzende Neubauten's last album Perpetuum Mobile, an album that documented the concept of travel in a very tight and streamlined way. Unlike Perpetuum Mobile,Hacke uses a myriad of styles and tempos which make it difficult tolisten to at first.

Fortunately, the title of Piano Magic's new album is not indicative of the music. There is a certain coldness and calculation to Glen Johnson's ensemble but it does not quite approach disaffection. Part of the album's chill is due to the explicit motif of ghosts and spectral images which cuts across both the music and the liner notes.

With any collaboration, searching for that elusive balance betweenrespective styles doesn't necessarily yield fantastic results, with thepitfalls of compromise and dominance playing significant roles in thesongwriting process. Many times, the sound of one musician will drownout the voice of another.

Everyone pretty much knows by now that it's pretty useless to review anew Merzbow album. Merzbow is Merzbow, and he'll always be Merzbow, andhe "does" Merzbow better than all of the Merzbow copyists out there,and it will probably always be that way. Aside from a few minorquibbles over whether digital-era Merzbow is better or worse than theoriginal analog Merzbow, there really isn't a whole lot of criticaldivision over Merzbow's output.

Thankfully Autechre have slowed down the rate of their output to onealbum every two years, with less EP releases in between. This hashelped allow them to create albums with only minor adjustments to aformula that has made them one of the best acts making electronicmusic. Untiltedis heavy on fractured rhythms and has very little of the whirlingambient sounds that featured prominently on some of their previousreleases.

There is now a live document of this duo that actually rivals theirstudio output. Two live recordings from October and November of 2004compose this record; both have the timeless feel that Potter andBradley's music almost always has, but now the live environment istransformative, cohesive, and wholly coherent.

Major Stars are Boston's best-kept secret, as anyone who has witnessedtheir live performances over the years can certainly attest. By day,under the auspices of their basement record shop Twisted Village—trulya Boston institution—Wayne and Kate are purveyors of psychedelic rockand hard-to-find underground sounds from around the world.

Nothing can stop this band from forcing me to participate in the most sinister of feelings. They're soaked in evil, sex, and those lonely and terrifying sensations that only open, dead spaces can convey. Bohren und der Club of Gore associate themselves with doom metal via their own website, were formally a self-described "hardcore" metal act, have all the mystery and intrigue of the best David Lynch films, and yet none of these descriptions get to the core of this quartet's sound.

I wrote about Akiyama's last record, describing him as a kind ofaccidental hero of the instrumental glitch musicians. His newerrecordings, alone or with Desormais, channel the same tugging, emotivebaggage and fragile tension as other real-time deconstructionists(clearest touchstone: Christian Fennesz), but Akiyama's are mostcomplex, less dependenton a single instrument or one's traditional referents.

I was skeptical about the potential clusterfuck of a record featuringDJ Spooky, Dave Lombardo (from Slayer), and Jack Dangers, but thepresence of two of my favorite MCs of all time, Chuck D and Dälek,pushed me over the edge into "I've got to at least hear this"territory.

While I wasn't paying attention, Finland seems to have become the newIceland. All the new underground acts worth knowing about these daysseem to hail from the sub-arctic climes of Helsinki, Tampere orJyvakyla.

Though they are also from Finland, Pharaoh Overlord have scrupulouslyavoided getting lumped into the "Finnish Underground" category typifiedby Es, Kemialliset Ystavat, Avarus, etc. This is largely because theirbrand of churning, plugged-in post-Krautrock shares little in commonwith the often amateurish, willfully obscure acoustic noodling of theirgeographical contemporaries.

Monika is the label founded by Gudrun Gut, formerly of German post-punknoir quintet Malaria!, a group that enjoyed renewed interest lately,after Chicks on Speed turned their song "Kaltes Klares Wasser" into anelectroclash anthem.