Whilst everyone comes back from their hi-art, lo-brow musical sojourns (Sonar, Glastonbury). Loaded with tales of eccentricity, mild binge drinking and bouts of casual violence. We have the diabolical Live 8 jizz-up this weekend here in London's Hyde Park.

Luckily I'm off to a country where they not only don't give a fuck about Africa, but positively hate on their own people through human rights abuses....Turkey. Byeeeeee.

Exile is known for all different styles of drum'n bass. But this debut album should see him breaking away from the restrictions of that genre. The rolling breakbeat pleasers are there of course. But sitting alongside are some pretty deep forays into reaktor patch ambience and digital disruption.

The centrepiece is the insane 'Broken Language'. A remix, no, complete re-edit of a track he did with John B. The hyper-edit cuts and DSP tricks do not detract from the addictive groove. Comes complete with the most almighty drop half way. I defy you not to be rhythmically propelled.

All hits, no misses. The up-tempo tracks really kick and grind, the experimental pieces are worthy of expansion and the whole album has an easy flow and narrative to it.

Close to the edits. The Art of Exile.

Even those who aren't aware or don't particularly care for the output of the godfather of British electronic music will find something of value in this double CD set. Electro, acid house, proto-rave, techno...it's all there. Whilst not exactly renowned for hands-in-the-air anthems, the ever-present motifs of dread, suspicion and political statements provide decidedly choice moments.

CD1 is from his eighties period, I guess when 808's and 909's provided Kirk's more esoteric experiments with a bit of kick. Roland's entire repertoire fused with stark northern minimalism. I think it's all ace, just the sort of noise I'd make if I was stuck in a rain-soaked industrial town with nothing but drum machines for company.

CD2 is the more 'intense' of the two. Made in the mid-seventies: open-reel tape machines, musique concrete and a fondness for distortion / feedback reveal a more direct approach to composition. 'Kinshasa Express' is fucking rad, 'Entering Creation' rocks hard.

For anyone with even the slightest interest in any of the music I mention on this blog.

'Apples and Synthesisers' LP was clever songwriting and deft use of romantic synths all illuminated in a warm light. This could be seen as a remix accompaniment with a few new tracks thrown in as filler.

Mitgang Audio, Legowelt and Lowfish all work in similar fields, so their remixes simply re-arrange the electro template to their own ends, resulting in slightly predictable workouts. Alter Ego though aim for jugular with an epic robot rock, hints of tension and sex but as empty and vacuous as their own output.

Best of all are the two poptastic turns by the ace Schneider TM and new Ghostly signing JDSY. Schneider reworks 'My Radio', twisting the lyrics around to reflect his own indieboy story whilst adding a zesty burst of jangly guitar. JDSY replaces the vocoder on 'For You' with suave swoon and dancefloor sophistication.

This has 'music for graphic designers' written all over it. Veers between noodly IDM bollox and more substantial drum pushers that are few and far between. All the more surprising that the original source material is by Andreas Tilliander. Both the label and artist have done better elsewhere.

Skam-affiliated and it sounds like it. Dour, moody and fucking miserable. Staple IDM-business that'll be down with the backpack brigade. Moves between futurist-electro and subdued clanking. Neither of which impress much.

The token "Hey, I'm down with this click house vibe" track is here ('On/Off') and of course it's better than anything else. But the power-grinder driven 'Aroh' has some sense of urgency to it. Outgoing track 'Zero Four Three' makes a last gasp at some freneticism. But on the whole this is pretty nondescript.

Whilst everyone is at the over-hyped, e-commerce, wankfest that is $ONAR (me? jealous?). I'm gonna be knee deep in other people's code. Struggling to come to terms with the solitary nature of it all. Trying to drown out the silence in my life. And generally being a reclusive c*nt. I've earned the right.

Out of all this lot, buy them all. Illegally downloading these will give you herpes....

Whilst the recent Deadbeat releases were pleasant enough, it hardly ploughed new territories. This, though, is something quite different. Alan Abraham's calling card for Africa glitch is in turns studied, loose and funky. Reminiscent of Richard H. Kirks more rhythmic moments. Simply put, these are nine exercises in subtle loop manipulation.

Processed guitar easing its way into ethnic samples on 'Ebb and Flow' The primal cyclism of 'Thought in Action' makes you want to mbuki-mvuki. Whereas a lot of ~scape's output explores colder terrain, this is warmer, as if everything has been left out to dry in the sun.

Following on from Tu m's spectactularo turn on Fallt's Ferric burn to order series, here we have Ian Andrews. Whom I would know more about, if only I could find the press release. I think he hails from Australia and I'm sure he doesn't own a drum machine.

The eight pieces on offer are all beatless, well they don't contain any discernible tempo specific pattern. Straddling the lines between experimental, abstract and dub, shades of gamelan appear on 'Libidinal Decay'. Tonal gongs with metallic interrupts. Sounds of distant gatherings and phases of sheared patches make up 'Jaffa', which instantly reminded me of Vladislav Delay's Uusitalo project.

Whilst Warp furrow new paths in the world of indie popness. (Financially wise, but it totally disinterest's me.) At least they still have the likes of Autechre flying the flag for 'difficult' music. They seem to invoke so much action and reaction that it's sometimes difficult to form and retain an opinion of your own.

Those who already subscribe will know that the Mancunian duo have long since jettisoned their electronic roots and gone off on the most skewed and impenetrable trajectory possible.

'Untilted' is their eighth album for Warp.

What gives this album its signature is the occasional moments of musical normality. The violent bursts of compressed artefacts that regularly punctuate 'Augmatic Disport' eventually make way for sub-bass electro. The skip-driven Oval style melody in the closing phase of 'Ipacial Section'. The hip hop undertow of 'The Trees'.

Autechre have discovered another off-world. But this time, it's a bit closer to ours.

'Low light dreams' by Signer provided a soundtrack to moments of intense introspection. Familiar environments, murkily-lit rooms and self contained exile. Expanding from his lone setup to include new members, 'The New Face of Smiling' loses nothing of the intimacy that previous works held.

The addition of low-in-the-mix vocals doesn't detract, acting as additional harmonics to the granulated guitar. Imperfections amplified: orchestrated fuzz, crackles and sheared feedback recur. The Transmat style pitch bend of 'I was dressed as the ant...' jolts you due to its rigidness. The ghost of dub hovers over all.

Everything here works.

For those blessed with the right spatial awareness, this is immediate, smart and affecting music.

I went through a pretty intense electro phase a few years back. Seemed that a bunch of artists were doing something interesting with it. Since then, my interest has waned and the lure of glitch has taken its place.

Still, odd fleeting moments of future funk pass my way and every once in a while, i'll like something. This is EMS on Satamile. Satamile are based in NYC, so this means you don't fuck with them. They hold the torch.

Everything here has been designed to make you dance and as such the consistent tempo, themes and motifs do start to grate. Certainly too linear to hold your attention for the hour long duration. But moments like the sublime 'Rhythmus Machine' could soundtrack the chase sequences in StreetHawk. 'Gi-Ne-Tik's old school hip hop dynamics will please the bass fiends and the minimal unfurling of 'Ellopticophasic' is moving things in the right direction.

Pump the LED's to red, take some drugs and shake your head.

More shpongle. But this time with the added bonus of a picture of a cat! Even if I had to bribe her with a tenner. Meow!

It's been a week of Frank. First catching his minimal iBook set at the Marke B festival in Berlin. Minimal not due to the nature of the music, but to the number of people he played to. Then missing him altogether at the more refined Cut'n Splice gig in London. Then discovering ace Quicktime clip on this old release from 2001.

Teaming up with Brooklyn's Taylor Deupree and released on the now defunct Mille Plateaux. This saw Frank's piercing tones and bleeps moulded into Taylor's dub framework. The apparently light footprints of 'Dug In' have a real subversive kick to them. Reactive pixel dance perfectly demonstrated on the video for 'Automotive', where jittery scrapes of static dissolve in pools of blue.

I'd always known that Dirk Dresselhaus, the chief scientist of SchneiderTM, had a nasty streak to him. Imagining he'd always be happy drowning out his unique brand of avant-pop with great swathes of noise. Well it seems that teaming up any member of Pan Sonic will bring out the sonic devil in you.

This is a single improvised piece cut up into ten shards of pain and penury. Dirk's droning, grungy guitar is dragged through a field of broken glass by Ilpo Vaisanen's rustic, squeaking steam-powered contraptions. One of those 'so noisy its ambient' kind of records. Earthy and brutal, needless to say, this isn't most people's idea of fun. But for those of us who crave having their ear drums remoulded will find this most agreeable.

Slightly weird this, reading the (hilarious) sleeve notes, I almost assumed Watanbe had died. I mean, a tribute? You do that once the artist has expired. But no, this seems to be a gushing love letter from Athen's Klik records. Still, look past the overdone praise and here are six slices of widescreen progressive house.

Most of these appeared on Cologne's Kompakt label. His slipstream doses of 4/4 fitting in with their 'Pop Ambient' concept. But the bongo percussion, endless uses of echo and 'i can activate a whole orchestra with one key' effect can really get on your tits after a while. Coffee table not included.

Likeable, vaguely ambient electronics from the Yunx duo. This originally came out in 2002 on their own Yunx Recordings (they're now signed to AI). Shades of B12 and Carl Craig here, especially on the standout tracks 'Jazz Skunk' and 'Old Sckool Junnski'. But, as with a lot of electronica, its too light and fluffy for its own good. All nicely produced, but I seriously doubt whether i'll revisit this ever again.

Simply can't hold back how insanely good this is.

"Structural faults are good starting points for our pieces - finding an 'error' in a loop or in a track is a wonderful surprise, and that error becomes a source for our ideas."

As part of Ferric, the limited edition burn-to-order series from Ireland's Fallt. This is a smart introduction to Tu m'. The Italian duo of Rossano Polidoro and Emiliano Romanelli eek out fourteen vignettes in playful, melodic exploration. Fusing glitch, toybox and muffled lo-fi recordings into a piece of work almost bursting with colour and geography.

At length: the frazzled, intense pixel wash of 'Mezzo Forte'. Zestful, almost fruity bubble on 'The End of the Summer'. The creaking, eerie glacial collapse that forms the backbone to 'Untitled' and overwhelming beauty of 'Something Sweet in the Coffee'.

In short: fucking amazing.

Check out their website at http://www.tu-m.com.

ATP: Easy to Swallow
Thursday 2nd June 2005
SE One, London Bridge, London

Open gallery

Carl Michael Von Hausswolff. He certainly looks like his name. Craggy, pensive, resplendent in standard-issue white suit. Looking strained as he forces fluctuating sinewaves to cause sonic wobble. Bird chirps form the metronome and we're left mesmerised and under for the 30 minute duration. Stunning.

The comfort zone that Mr. Hausswolff leaves us in is quickly shattered by Yasunao Tone and Hecker. Modem tone scrape / Reaction to metals / laptop boredom. Their performance was all this and more. Convinced the whole thing was just playback, with virtually little or no interaction from either.

Slightly disappointed that Mark Stewart didn't do as many Pop Group songs as i'd have liked. His set list seemed to explore the more darker end of his output. Unfamiliar and alien to me, anyway. But after a slightly wobbly start, his set quickly settled into a followable groove. The tight backing of the old Sugarhill group provided a decent, if not exactly thrilling, musical backdrop.

A quick shift in audience (average age drops by 10 years) for Aphex Twin's set. Largely forgettable nonsense: tired acid, disjointed hip-hop and some slightly dodgy breakbeat. Only when he replayed moments off the brilliant Analord series did we all liven up. But those were too few and far between.

Whitehouse. Eeeek! A recent Wire article stated that the more they try to 'shock', the funnier they become. And I'm inclined to agree. The black-svelted duo of Bennett and Best position their laptops at extreme ends of the stage, allowing centre space for vocal turns. The high-velocity, freefall scream that constitutes their 'power electronics' certainly knocks the wind out of you. Best's lyrical, high-pitched sneer that occasionally ascends into incoherent gutteral shrieks is perverse as it is arresting.

But some members of the crowd take their cabaret posturing a tad too literally. And beercans and bottles start slowly making their way towards the stage via the air. After a few land too close for comfort, they both decide to jack it in, plug themselves out and leave. British Murder Boys do their best to follow. But even they know that the fiercest statement of the night has already been made.

One of the main factors for shutting down Absorbobble was the sheer volume of music that was coming in. I'll sound like a right cunt saying this, but it rapidly became unmanageable and annoying. So i quickly learned to ignore it: records piled up, press releases filed away. I could totally relate to John Peel when he always fretted about the fact there weren't enough hours in the day to listen to all this.

But to listen and then try to write about it? No chance, not unless things were reduced down to soundbites. Granted, most of the stuff we got was utter nonsense, but there'd always be the hidden gem that you could boast to your mates about.

Well now that I have no mates and no records....

How good are Mouse on Mars? Fuck knows where they get their ideas from or how they even go about cobbling it all together. With some musicians and bands, you could maybe work out how its done, but not with this lot. Fond memories of a jaw-dropping gig at the much missed Embassy Rooms in Tottenham Court Road (now a strip club for rich wankers) always surface whenever I hear them. 'Radical Connector' is also ace: Dodo Nkishi and Niobe on vocals add some jolts of pure pop amongst the brain-curdling beats. Best demonstrated by the amazing single 'Wipe That Sound'.

Although generally well-received by other people like us, I find 50% of his artwork self-indulgent. This album fell right into this category. An audio scrapbook, no narrative to speak of and no real value beyond the initial listen. Quiet for the most part, this explores environments and locations that are immediate to him. But I found this alien and disengaging.

Her 'Hi-Fi' album will eventually surface from the piles of plastic that sit to my right. In the meantime, this remix accompaniment only makes me eager to hear the originals. From warm, deep-house treatments to abstract, obtuse exercises in patch process. Dwayne Sodahberk's guitar shreds. Sophie's own eye-lash lined retro take. But best of all are the two servings by Differnet and Son of Clay. Her vocals lost somewhere in the slow refined descent into digital deconstruction. Mention must also go to the euro-rave effort by Puss. The cover art of pixel tapestry formulated by Angela Lorenz is equally stunning. Sehr cool, sehr clever.

Kicking myself for not shouting about this at the time of its release, but this is possibly the best house album ever. No, really. The underlying, unspoken but agreed principles of click are all there but Gabor Schablitzki throws in all sorts of wonky extras. Moments of Aphex-scoured edits, tripped up vocals and tantalising bursts of lambent melody make for a stylistically messy 50 minutes.

But what a glorious mess! From the opening vocodered mantra of 'Hugendubel' to the motorik pelt of 'Mensur'. Bar the slightly odd and cheesy lounge stylings of 'Skrubbs', everything else here is a winner. Whilst you're at it, pick up the other thirteen releases on the label as well. Ace artwork too.

Accomplished, refined but ultimately quite dry examinations of digitally produced dub. Nothing really jumps out and grabs you, or maybe that's the whole point? Regardless, these passages in bass and delay stretch their ideas to breaking point. Smart editing might have helped, it could have made a killer EP. Only the 4/4 din of 'Slavic', the immediate 'Application' and title track hint at more agreeable territories. Seek out the far superior 'From Tears: Beach Archive' LP on Bip-Hop instead.