It's a softer Astbury; a smoother, more sultry singer who finds a comfort zone among layered electronics, acoustic melodies, and choruses that aren't predominantly made up of "yeah" and "baby." There's still fuzzbox guitar that snarls around your head (making you wonder just what Billy Duffy is up to while Astbury is out wreaking havoc without him), but it has its place. Less of a relentless stomp, Spirit\Light\Speed gives ground to an aesthetic of sound that shows the wisdom of time has marked itself on Astbury. "Metaphysical Pistol" finds him plunging headlong into Moby territory with spoken word discourse and the inclusion of a quote from famed Zen philosopher Alan Watts. As he says later on the album: "Life travels faster than sound." Astbury isn't afraid that we'll be trying to force him into a Cult-style pigeonhole; his only concern is that we've stopped listening, stopped being able to hear. Spirit\Light\Speed is swaggering cock rock that has transcended the limits of all three into something purer, richer, and full of the triptych named by its title.

-Mark Teppo
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-Sabrina Haines
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Links:
Peggy Green

So of course I start to wonder: how could it be that it's just this; simply a single musical narrative with no pushy requirement to know more about the musician or music? I get curious and check out the website, where I find that Ms. Green was an aspiring musician until she had a bizarre accident during a softball game that forced her to shelve her ambitions for some time. Next she was struck by RSI (Repetitive Stress Injury) in both hands, where the pain left behind was so terrible that once while hiking she clapped at an oncoming animal to scare it away and lost feeling in her hands for over two months. This goes far to explain the simple beauty of the album, where the artist is not just struggling to find a voice or tell a story, but is struggling to simply play.

Suddenly the complexity of it all is deepened by degrees, and I'm forced to pay attention to someone else's story. Digging deeper into the album I get thrown another curveball when I discover that each song is a storyline for an ongoing Neal Stephenson-influenced science fiction narrative that Ms. Green has been writing. I'm both completely blown away and utterly confused as I try to match the gentle country wisps of her dobro to the accompanying prose on her website. This is simply too weird in a Twilight Zone sort of way. My perspective on the album is marred. As the music slides across the dobro's body it's no longer melancholy musings, it's entire profound ruminations based on both fact and fiction. How could one include a bio with this album? Hauntingly beautiful, no matter how deep the listener delves.

-Craig Young
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Links:
Psychorealm

They waste no time getting serious on the album's opener, "The Crazy Area." The bass pins you to the ground, the mesmerizing rhythm picks you right back up and one of the brothers' roughneck voices puts you in a stranglehold and breathes fire down your throat. Song three, "Pico-Union District," makes you feel like you are jammin' with the master of funk. With only B-Real singing, the Cypress Hill connection gets downright spooky. Number nine, "Moving Through streets," goes over the top with its lounge-inspired reggae underpinning. It has me convinced that I do like reggae. And it never stops. 12 perfect, 100% bad-ass funk jams! And for those who miss hip-hop's angry edge of the '90s, this is your album. A War Story is covered with that sort of gothic darkness that Ice Cube, Public Enemy, Dr. Dre and Paris are capable of. I have to give major props to Jacken and Mr. Duke. They are truly representing something that is essential in America today.

-Jeff Ashley
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Links:
Retina

The great thing about percussionists is that they love to show off their chops. Clocking in at just over thirty minutes, Batterie is driven by Matt's ferocious sense of rhythm. Opening with the sourced sound of a school yard, Batterie drops us into a vat of smooth liquid butter with "Hypersomnia," delighting us with shuffling rhythm over a rising and falling melody of echoing voices. This state of induced somnambulance is knocked aside by the gritty, propelled energy of Matt's percussion. Track names become synonymous with velocity: "Rev," "Echo," "Fuel," and "Palpitate." On a good day, my commute is about 45 minutes. On a good day with Batterie slamming out of my car stereo, I complete the drive before the album finishes. And yes, officer, my wheels never left the road.

-Mark Teppo
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Enter Manifold Records. A quite little label out of Tennessee which has been doing some exceptional work with experimental and ambient music, Manifold has decided to give birth to a side label of their own--an ugly little sister devoted to this deranged, beat-infested style of music. Their first release, Economi$ed, even includes a little head-to-head action with Quoit and Cylon--Harris' and Broadrick's pseudonyms for this damaged drum 'n' bass. The rest is pretty impressive as well. A couple of members of Ocosi crop up under a few names as well as turning in an Ocosi track. David Reeves (who has delivered a few albums to the FAX label) has a new project called Otraslab. Manifold's own Chad Jones delivers a Quoit remix under his Totemplow name as well as the opening track under the GonePostal name. PCM (Neil Harvey's project which had a previous outing on the Possible label) shows up as does Kurt Gluck, slamming the beats under his Su8m3rg3d name.

Manifold has collected a fabulous range of tracks here, from the Chemical Brothers-influenced loops over a hint of Talvin Singh-style tablas in GonePostal's "Crocodile Perfume" to the Scorn-esque beats and shuddering tones of Su8m3rg3d's "to." Economi$ed signals the revival of a murky, clattering subgenre that never really got its day in the sun (or under the eclipse, rather). Hopefully with the assistance of mother label Manifold, Economy will be banging your speakers around for a long time.

-Mark Teppo
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Like a bowl of seafood gumbo, you're never sure what you're going to get with a soundtrack. At its best, the soundtrack is like another actor, a twelfth man; it sets the tone, adds fuel to the engine, bringing the visual elements together to make something altogether more powerful and interesting. A perfect example of this would be RZA's conceptual masterpiece of a score for Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai. In my opinion with this score RZA set the benchmark for urban soundtracks to follow, and Nutty Professor II: The Klumps doesn't even come close! "Hey you haven't seen the movie so how can you say that, it's not fair?" Yes, but neither is life, which is not to say there aren't a few good moments on this disc.

Janet "Ms. Jackson if You're Nasty" Jackson tones it down a bit, adds a healthy dose of sweetener, and donates "Doesn't Really Matter" to the stew. A pure pop joint and obvious play to the times, producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis add enough of their distinctive flavorings to make it truly distinctive from today's teen idol groups. Jay-Z's "Hey Papi" had me scrambling for the remote like a football fumbled on the one-yard line--can you say overexposed? Sad thing is, dance floors from East to West will no doubt be bouncing to this all summer long, encouraging more of the same from the Jigga man. Musiq's "Just Friends (Sunny)" contains jazz elements reminiscent of D'Angelo's distinctive stylings which pour out the speakers like the smoke of a dozen sticks of Nag Champa incense on a cool summer night. Method Man's "Even If"--the strongest rap track on the album--is hot like a Texas drought-filled summer. DJ Ty Boogie's solid work on the steel wheels had me air scratchin' the hook, with such enthusiam I damn near wrecked my car. If there is any justice in the world Mr. Meth will no doubt earn the Source magazine's "Hip-Hop Quotable" award for the month, his rhymes are that baggin'. The only other tracks worth mentioning are Eve's sassy toned "Let Me Be" and Dru Hill Presents Jazz's "Here with Me."

Maybe one day when it's on HBO I'll get a chance to see if this disjointed and random-sounding collection of songs contributed to the movie in a positive way. In the meantime, all I can think about is Granny Klump in the hot tub with with Buddy Love removing her dentures for some toothless...you know!

-Cecil Beatty-Yasutake
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Kerrang! has done a great job of culling a mix of old and new punk bands to keep all parties happy. We are treated to a smash-mouth kick in the ass from influential British bands Discharge, The Exploited, Sham 69; to that SoCal sound of NOFX and The Vandals; and drawing from the underside of NYC bands like Agnostic Front, Earth Crisis and the famous monsters the Misfits. Included here is a little trip to Seattle, with the No WTO Combo consisting of members of Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Jello Biafra. This live piece is pulled from the back burner of the Dead Kennedys with "Let's Lynch the Landlord." For the ska fancier we have Less Than Jake and King Pawn. When you are in that raging grindcore mood, Napalm Death is here to help fuck shit up. When in that lowdown sleazy dive mood we are offered The (International) Noise Conspiracy and The New Bomb Turks. Other bands rounding out this angst-ridden mess of energy are: Vision of Disorder, Snapcase, Hybrid Children, Afi, The Get up Kids, Stompin' Ground and The Hivs. Kerrang! has not left a punk stone unturned. How much more attitude does anyone need? Well, Kerrang! has you covered for those in-your-face days.

-Steve Weatherholt
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A metaphor for the nature of the city landscape, Staedtizism allows these pioneers to share their vision of life in the modern city, to bleach our minds with the drifting loneliness of empty roads late at night, to capture the lost columns of steam rising from rusted grates, to make us wonder why these cities have fallen into stillness. These aren't songs culled from the busy streets or the noisy back alleys filled with cats and lumbering trash compacters. These are adventures down the dim avenues, the ones that look unused even in the midst of the bustling metropolis; these are the streets where buses never run and the only things moving are plastic sacks being blown in the ever-dying breeze. The cities have grown up, found new centers of commerce and nightlife, forgetting these once-flourishing back roads. These songs have the delayed sense of history woven through them, the static sound of old radio transmissions still caught in the fractured webbing of chain link fences.

These aren't dreary songs and these certainly aren't dreary fellows. Rather, they have chosen to drift along, outside of the neon lights and the wild splash of the hotly contested flavor of the month spotlight; instead they are digging up the old stones of the forgotten streets, finding their history and themselves beneath the worn rocks. Staedtizism is the sound of the city with all the human noise stripped away. All that is left is the echo of history and the wind. It's peaceful and strangely exhilarating.

-Mark Teppo
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-Steve Weatherholt
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