Psapp hit the mainstream with the theme song to the popular show Grey's Anatomy, but there has been a quiet buzz about them since their charming debut Tiger, My Friend. That charm was amplified on 2005's The Only Thing I Ever Wanted, and two years later they return with a new album that is, dare I say it, yet another improvement on their unique sound. Playful lyrics with unorthodox sounds in the background is a cheap way to describe Psapp, but I guess it's the best I can come up with. They bring an energy to each song that is palpable. This record shows a lot of changes in tempo, and the melodies almost sound video gamish at times, but strangely it works very well for what they're trying to do. By now there's just so many influences melding with an already offbeat style that it makes Psapp's very poppy offerings very hard to describe. But that's the ironic thing - this is definitely pop music, just the very imaginative and impeccably produced kind you don't hear very often.

Presumably due to City Centre Office's hiatus after Hausmusik went under as their distributor, Tejada and Nishimoto release their fourth album as I'm Not a Gun on Tejada's own Palette label. Most of you probably know the story by now. Tejada is the renowned dance music innovator and IDM producer for the long defunct Defocus Records, and Nishimoto is the classically trained guitarist. The guitar and electronic sounds come together for jazzy instrumental rock that's extremely pleasant and wields together the two disparate sounds perfectly. This album is more another day at the office for the duo, not really doing anything new, but then again, when a formula works as well as theirs, you don't need to try anything new. I'd say this problem is probably on par with We Think As Instruments and not as good as Our Lives on Wednesdays. If you're looking for something new from these guys, you might be disappointed. But if you're okay with hearing more of the same, then this is definitely worth your time.

With its fifth limited release, Somnia is introducing Juxta Phona & Offthesky to the rest of the world. Starting off with some ambient and modern classical sounds, Somnia delivered a little surprise with their last release by Evan Marc and Steve Hillage. In Dreamtime Submersible the duo has married dub techno and hypnotic ambient sound into a critically acclaimed composition that speaks for itself - the 777 limited copies are completely sold out. With the signing of Juxta Phona and Offthesky onto the label, the dub journey continues, this time with a jazzy swing. On !Escape Kit! the artist experiments with dubbed out, hazy, and definitely groovy beats, lightly sprinkled with tiny glitches and IDM treatments, but nevertheless purely organic sound. Instruments like vibraphone, sax, and jazz guitar quickly find themselves in a surreal atmosphere surrounded by acoustic drums, synth bleeps, clocks and paper rips. As if the local jazz band from the 60s has been secretly miked during one of their nonchalant improvisational coffee house performances, with the cables running through the walls into upstairs laboratory, where Juxta Phona and Offthesky feed the signal into their vacuum tubes, magnetic tapes, and digital machines, to twist, to bend, and warp the time, the sound, and reality. Inconceivably somnific, somniferous, somnolent. Here I want to applaud the art of Ray Massini, who has been printing the recycled paper covers with soy ink for every Somnia release. The illustration depicts an urban city rising above the skies, overgrown with evergreens, all floating on a piece of earth uprooted from its core. I need to get out. I need to withdraw. I need to return to my essential center of being. Where is my escape kit? Pick up your copy of this limited release while it hasn't run out. Clearly, by this point, Somnia is a collectible label, where each release shines on its own.

Dorian Concept's sound isn't exactly categorizable. The Vienna, Austria based producer is known around Europe for his live performances full of on the spot beatmaking creating highly danceable tracks with his Micro Korg and Casio keyboards. His music, like much of Scott Herren's work consists of lots of editing and melody changes while riding out over a warm analog groove. "A TrebleO Beat Tape" is a very impressive release to say the least.

Getting back to melodic electronica, I turn my attention to Andrew Johnson and Craig Tattersall, who go by the name of The Remote Viewer. Their previous releases include two albums on 555 Recordings and three LPs on one of my favorite labels, City Centre Offices. This time, the duo releases their latest album, I Can't Believe It's Not Better, on their very own label, Moteer, that has previously graced our eardrums with Clickits, The Boats, and Part Timer. Well... It's actually released on a sublabel of Moteer, called Mobeer, which [with a pun on a name] they claim to be Moteer's micro brewery. This has been an anticipated release, with the last output from The Remote Viewer being over three years ago. The sound of the album quickly brings back the memories. The clicky ambiance and looping pads are complimented by soft breathy vocals by Nicola Hodgkinson and Andrew Johnson himself. The atmosphere of subliminal sounds and fragile percussion is at one point cut through with folksy banjo strumming. Fragments of piano, broken toys, field recordings and other found sounds recreate an experience of unwrapping dusty memories from within an old suitcase. And here's a collector's dream come true: the copies are limited to only 375 worldwide and happen to be out of stock already on boomkat. The lucky ones received two 3" mini CDrs in a hand made brown envelope and a printed beer mat with a peculiar message : "i went and picked up my complimentary corporate wear today. it came in a big cardboard suitcase. when i got home i unpacked six identical shirts, two suit jackets and two ties. no trousers though. the woman i rang said that trousers were out of stock (as popular now as ever). this could provide everyone with a big problem on my first day. i did however get two belts. one to wear and the other presumably, to hang myself with." That perhaps shines some light on the state of mind behind the ten untitled tracks.

I'm not normally into ambient rock that much, but this is definitely one of the most impressive albums of the year. Fans of the Make Mine Music label take note. The Fun Years create a mix of instrumental and electronic sounds for engaging ambient that builds up over the course of the album. Ambient music this powerful simply doesn't come around very often. The opener "My Lowville" starts off with a gentle guitar strum and electronic sounds, and both build and build for ten minutes until you can't tell which sound is which. A piano takes over on track 2 (reminding me of Swod's Sekunden, my #1 album of 2007), and reinterprets the opener while pushing forward the narrative of the album. Field noises and guitar interrupt the flow of the piano as it decays into chaos, like a damaged tape recording, until synths save it from complete destruction. Track 3 moves closer to the territory of Lusine Icl, as it's a little gentler, and a little cleaner electronic ambient that forms its own heartbeat with the sounds, a motif that continues with track 4 and flares up as it nears closer "The Surge Is Working", which opens up the guitars for the type of volume hinted at by the rest of the album. Multiple guitars and flickering noises weave up a threatening melody for a full on symphonic post rock meltdown that will make Explosions in the Sky go back to the drawing board. A must-listen.

This side project of Grizzly Bear's Daniel Rossen has become the vehicle for a de facto Grizzly Bear release with its second album, enlisting the help of fellow Grizzlies Chris Bear and Chris Taylor, in additon to Rossen's original partner in crime and former roommate Fred Nicolaus. If Gas's music is described as "techno from another room", then Grizzly Bear's (and now Department fo Eage's) material should be "pop music coming from the attic". What on other records would be clear instrumental sounds sound withered and distant. There's an inherent rust to these sounds that no other bands really tapped into, and it's part of what made Yellow House one of the best albums of 2007. In Ear Park on the surface is not quite as impressive, but impressions sneak their way in on multiple listens, until after a while, you're impressed by the entire album, even if just the architecture of it. Occasionally a dea ringer for Grizzly Bear, and sometimes much less serious (as on stand-out "Teenagers"), but continuously impressive.

Todd Osborne covers a lot of ground on this new album, which I'd moreso call a collection of tracks all in different styles of dancefloor music. I guess the overarching sound here is house, but it's all different forms of it, with echoes of techno, downtempo, breakbeat, latin, electropop and more. Osborne might be better known in Jungle circles as Soundmurderer, but he's far from that sound here. Some of the sounds are very old school (especially his collab with Ed DMX), but Todd manages to keep things fresh as well, and it's the collision of all these elements and the overall variety that makes thsi record special. "Downtown" and "Air Pistol" are some of the best dancefloor tunes I've heard in a while, and they're completely different. A must-have for fans of dance music.

All I can say is, holy shit, buy this album immediately. I literally haven't been this excited by a band all year, and I'm not even sure how to go about the usual signifiers of 'recommending' something ... I guess let me just say that Crystal Stilts have melted down the last 40 years of rock music and reconstituted it into an understated lo-fi post-punk masterpiece that falls somewhere between 'Marquee Moon,' 'Psychocandy,' and 'Nouns.' This is simply the best album of the year thus far.

Okay, I'll be honest: I'm all for a band exploring new sounds, but frankly I was hoping that Microcastle would contain more of the blissful shoegaze-ish heights of earlier Deerhunter tracks like 'Spring Hall Convert' and 'Fluorescent Grey.' But Bradford Cox has confounded me (in a good way!), and created an album as different from 'Cryptograms' as that album was from their initial full-length effort. There's nary an effects pedal to be found, and Cox's songwriting genius is now put in the service of impossibly straightforward and clean-sounding mid-tempo early-60s pop songs, with occasional forays into a harder/complicated sound, or into elegiac piano, sound collage, etc. ('Weird Era Cont.,' the second 'companion' album --- not a double album! --- contains tracks which are quite short and vaguely Cryptograms-ish, though of B-side quality.) Overall, an entirely worthwhile purchase from one of the most impressive bands of the '00s.