Albums you should check out.

[imported_I, fuzzbot.]

Beans - 'Tomorrow Right Now'
Wordy ex-Antipop dude lays some some phat rhymes over a combination of chunky futuristic beats, Warp-y 'tronica clicking, sparse human beatbox and girls going 'Phreek The Beet!'

Clue To Kalo - 'Come Here When You Sleepwalk'
Cute electronica in the vein of theboylucas, but only better. Listening to Clue To Kalo isn't EXACTLY like being hugged by puppies while lying on a cotton-wool bed drinking juice, but it's a little bit like it, and that's cool. Get it if you like Boards Of Canada or Clue To Kalo. ESPECIALLY if you like Clue To Kalo. And download 'This Is Over By Inches'.

Cat Power - 'You Are Free'
My favourite Cat Power song is Chan Marshall's cover of 'Come On In My Kitchen' by 30's Delta bluesman Robert Johnson (get that!), but this is nice, too. It's not much different to what you'd expect from Cat Power, but that's kinda comforting in its own way.

Zwan - 'Mary Star Of The Sea
You know you're gonna buy this anyway, you gimp, it's got Billy Corgan on it. And despite the pompous title, it's not some conceptual crap, it's an album of big sunny rock songs with crap lyrics about love. But look! David Pajo! Paz! Guitars! Nice! Buy!

NMS - 'Woe To Thee O Land Whose King Is A Child'
Remember hearing that Charlotte Church had recorded a song called 'Brave New World' with some DJ called Jurgen? Did you think, 'Cool! She's rebelling against her choirgirl roots by recording an incendiary treatise about the state of the world and the erosion of democratic principles which have been instigated by the US' corporate hegemony, bringing us dangerously close to the homogenised, bland stew of mind-numbing herd mentality and government-mandated entertainment envisioned by Aldous Huxley in the book of the same name'? Were you slightly disappointed when it turned out to be a crap piece of pointless 'euphoric trance' bollocks about 'journeying through your mind' destined to end up on compilations like 'The Best Euphoric And Non-Specifically 'European' Trance Released In The Second Two Weeks Of January 2003...Ever!'?

As a tribute to the book, it pretty much sucked balls. NMS know your pain. NMS are Big Justoleum (ex-Company Flow) and, well, some other guy. They're mighty pissed off at George W Bush and all his mates. They dish him a lot of bile here, and it's really quite exciting. Notable song titles include 'Super Pretzel (Diplo Damage)'. At some points the proselytising gets a little much and a little obvious, but rap can get away with taking subjects head-on in a way which rock music really can't. And that's why we need shit like this now. Plus, the beats be phat, bro!

[EverythingWillSuck]

i suggest you check out Negativland's "Over the Egde Vol. 3: Dick Vaughn's Moribund Music of the 70's" ok

[imported_I, fuzzbot.]

A Grape Dope - 'Missing Dragons'
I'd like to start this with a graceful segue by pointing out that Anticon hero Doseone guests on this album's 'Red Hat Attack'. And I just did. Genuinely intruiging dub-based avant-rock? That'll do nicely.

Nurse With Wound - 'Salt Marie Celeste' (United Dairies)
Ever wanted to know what some guy reckons it might have sounded like to spend an hour on a doomed ship headed for Genoa in 1872? Nurse With Wound are here to help. It sounded like an hour of ambient sea noises, creaking and occasional barely-tangible beats. He's helpfully shown this by compiling said sounds into one 62-minute track. Ace. Sleep to this.

[imported_I, fuzzbot.]

SK/UM - 'I Thagu Fallsins'
The best Icelandic electronica album since Worm Is Green? You bet.

Sylvain Chauveau - 'Un Autre Décembre'
makes simple melodies sound beautiful. Lisa Simpson said 'You have to listen to the notes she's NOT playing!' to which the guy replies 'I could do THAT at home!', which is true. So buy this, and listen to it at home.

Jaga Jazzist - 'The Stix' (Ninja Tune)
One of those 'collectives' of musicians with varying This, most emphatically, does NOT rock. It's like the opposite of rock. I don't know what the opposite of rock is. Scissors? So anyway, this is what arty folks describe as 'minimalist'. That means that fuck-all happens. It's all about space, Chauveau is a self-trained pianist who knows the value of restraint and how silence used in the right way numbers of musicians that appear randomly out of the ether to play tenor sax. So yeah, Norweigian jazz. But it's not beardy jazz, this is jazz like 'Standards'-era Tortoise being infected with a computer virus.