Dr. Octagon - 'Dr. Octagonecologyst' (Dreamworks/Bulk)

God, the 90s were great. I forgot I had this, and I probably haven't listened to it in a decade, but I remember every word. I must have listened to this a lot in my University years, because almost every one of Kool Keith's bizarre lyrics has stayed with me. Every once in awhile I give hip-hop a chance, but I've learned that whenever it gets talked about as being "experimental" or "psychedelic" it's rarely those things. This would certainly be psychedelic from a lyrical perspective, in a horror movie way, though the frequent bizarre sex jokes and animal nonsense make Dr. Octagonecologyst  a unique, unclassifiable beast. No, I think this works precisely because it's not experimental at all. It's grounded by stunning hip-hop backing tracks courtesy of Dan the Automator, and I think the reason none of Keith Thrornton's followups have been very good is because this magical pairing was something that could only happen once. There's no atmosphere quite like this, even if this wasn't rap music; the skits don't bug me, the porno samples are somehow appropriate, and there's a few tracks (particularly 'Technical Difficulties') that verge into truly unexplored territory and are actually awe-inspiring at points. I saw Keith live, sometime around the Dr. Dooom album or maybe Matthew, and it was one of the worst performances I've ever seen, disappointing me to the point where I probably haven't listened to this since. As floundering as his post-Octagon career has been (and there's an article on Grantland that gets into the recent years), it's all forgiven for the magic of 'Blue Flowers', 'Earth People' and 'halfsharkalligatorhalfman' (a title which has a beautiful logic in itself). I'm not really qualified to discuss hip-hop at all, and my tastes (as revealed on these pages) are so hideously tied to white people my age that I'm embarrassed at my own stereotype. But this stays with me, a relic of my life that I've spent enough time with to forever feel a kinship when I meet, to cite a recent example, someone who signs their iPhone emails with "Sent from my 7XL (not yet invented)."

DENT - 'verstärker' (Magnetic)

DENT's second release is much more club-orientated, but the first half quickly blendsinto an electronica-tinged soup. The sequenced drums aren't really the problem, but rather the reliance on 'groove' replacing texture. Despite this, I sorta like Verstärker, or at least remembered liking it back in the late 90's when I last spun it. The split between vocal/songform tracks and musicality-rooted jams are much more severe than on Stimmung. When there's singing, it's a different world than the beat-orientated bits. When it's fruity, DENT seems to be trying to push things a bit further here. But I think I like it more integrated. My problem is that the jammy bits are messy - too much kitchen sink-aesthetic for my tastes. It gets more song-based as the album proceeds, leaving a pleasant taste when it finishes. There's more than a few missteps -  'Jaded Eyes', for example, can't help but remind me of a 4NonBlondes outtake, with weird thumping bass. Yet Verstärker overall is far less tossed-off than the first album, almost like it demands to be taken more seriously. 'Cause the Rain' is the standout track, a moment of real fragility amongst the clatter. There's a female voice that appears througout, perhaps 'Jane Err' or 'Allisong Fate-Levity' as credited, ad it's chilling. 'Tsuki e' is another standout, a bit of forest-folk ten years before all that shit started happening. Krummenacher's folky side comes out in the end, and it sounds like a completely different band than on the first half of the disc - an inconsistency that could be maddening, or a virtue.

Bügsküll - 'Phantasies and Senseitions' (RoadCone)

Somehow, without actually realising it, I've accumulated a mini-gauntlet of Bügsküll recordings over the years, though my selection is far from complete. But I wouldn't hesitate to fill in the gaps, as Sean Bügsküll is an often-overlooked musical explorer, whose early work (found on this CD) recalls an early 90s Portland underground that I've pieced together a picture of built solely from recordings like this, Cher Doll records, and whatever other weirdness filtered into my brain. There's 18 tracks on Phantasies and Senseitions, but they aren't divided between phantasies and senseitions. It's generally easy to tell which is which; maybe the dual nature of this collection is why it has both an 'Intro' (track 1) and an 'Opening Theme' (track 3). This is one of the most rock-like Bügsküll releases, or at least there are less electronics than on his later stuff. Though it might be more accurate to say that whatever electroacoustic elements are present in these tracks are recorded so 4-track lo-fi that it feels as organic as the guitars and keyboards that are also here. This is a band format, while later Bügsküll is more of a solo artist. There are songs here, though catchy pop hooks are buried in lumbering, reverb-laden loops and breathy, unintelligible vocals. Mistakes are left in, and even celebrated, but instead of an aggressive Pussy Galore vibe, this band is more like a ragged pillow. There's a clustering of more organised songs near the end of the disc, ranging from melting electric folk ('Concrete Boots') to punchy pop-rock ('Olympic'), but it's never played that straight. Some tracks on Phantasies and Senseitions are genre sketches, like pastoral 'Old Towne', and strange looping experiments like 'Inhuman' that sound like Shirley Collins dunked in a vat of molasses. When I found this CD (a few years after it came out) I saw them as more like the West Coast Guided by Voices, but now I don't have the slightest idea why I made that comparison, as this is far far more experimental music. Apart from 'Sit on This' (which can't deny it's grunge influence, especially since this is 1994), there's almost nothing of singalong value here. The experimentation isn't miles away from Elephant 6-style bedroom psychedelia, with found sounds often applied over top of poorly-recorded drums and line-in guitars. There are elements of free rock but of a slowed-down, stoned out variety. Horns and/or violins (sometimes recorded so badly you can't really be sure) strengthen the melodic approach, and it doesn't feel particularly improvised, but still freewheelin'. 'Seguara' lumbers along with a 90s indie rock sound, with delicately placed vocals getting thrown under the bus at times. But my pick of the disc is 'Concrete Boots', a fractured, off-key work of total romantic beauty and bliss.

Brasil and the Gallowbrothers Band - 'Legionowo' (Monotype)

Polish atmospheric psychedelic indie-rock certainly is a field I could stand to learn more about, being that my education pretty much starts and ends with Brasil. This quartet of Warsaw artists certainly do a lot to set the vibe with the crimson and golden CD artwork. All moody comic-style drawings by Brasil's trumpeter, Tomek Mirt (who also has a solo disc we'll get to in the M's), this immediately conjures the dark, post-war Europe that Poland in general makes me think of. The golden dusk radiates throughout these six tracks, which are structured around a singer-songwriter who really speaks more than sings. The vocals are in English but really felt more than heard, with the sibilence of the human voice creating a great after-effect for the low-level white noise samples and effects-box hiss that coats everything. It's probably all the better with lyrics like "i pack my things / and leave capitalism", but I shouldn't pick on people who don't speak English as a first language. There are no drums here - it's rock because it has guitars, and the two most immediate comparisons are Labradford and Talk Talk. There's an obvious love of all the 90s post-shoegaze guitar calm, such as Bark Psychosis and Hood, but without any trace of rock, really. The unfolding, billowing soundscapes are lifted from the Laughing Stock playbook, and the trumpet is played in a purely Spaceheads way, never swampy but definitely wet. Instrumental 'The Town' brings in some synth beats and a more prevalent role for the (cheap) keyboards, but it's really on the last two tracks where Brasil paint their most unique canvas. 'Far From the Rest''s lyrics are a bit rambling, but it's all couched in a gallon of slimy soundpaint. At the end of this 11 minute+ track, a recording of someone from Pink Floyd talking is brought in, which is a pretty daring move but it's amazingly successful -- amazing, because I actually wasn't really listening so I couldn't even tell you which member it was or what they were talking about. And instead of going back to check for you, dear readers, I thought it might be better to just let it slide over me and become another instrument, which is what was intended. The dissonance is rare - every gesture is delicate, and only occasionally do the synths and electronics really create a buzz. I'm not sure how open these structures are, but when Brasil want to, they are capable of a pretty magical ambience. White noise is here much more than you'd think - unless it's my air-conditioning acting up again. The 90s had some great moments, though I suspect this came in the following decade. That this is named after an otherwise forgettable Warsawa suburb makes it all the more unusual that such beauty can be strived for, and in moments, really achieved.

Bark Psychosis - 'Hex' (Caroline)

In the shadowy microscenes we all occupied in the 90s, a few albums had a special significance. Hex is one of these, though it was a microscene that I sort of skated around. Back when I used to find out about music through listserv recommendations and the occasional allmusic.com-esque resource, it gradually became apparent to me that Hex was going to be a somewhat 'mandatory' listen. I was continually enthralled by Talk Talk's Laughing Stock et al. from the age of 19 on, and Hex was promised to be either a worthy sucessor or a blatant ripoff, depending on who you heard it from. It was quite difficult to find for awhile due to Caroline's weird distribution but I remember the day I finally tracked it down (through some secondhand half.com-style store) and listened to it for the first time. Actually, this CD doesn't really sound much like Talk Talk, a truth which brought immediate disappointment back then; now years later, its individuality is probably what salvages Hex and makes me so appreciative of it. Most of the records that really do sound like Laughing Stock clones (such as that last Slowdive album, or that one Dean Roberts solo record) are too indistinct, like their soul has been sucked out. I know it's a long time til we reach the T's, but soul is what makes Mark Hollis's music so powerful and well, epoch-defining. I don't feel the soul in quite the same way here; BP's songwriting is no less serious but it failed to connect with me on any level. Again, that's not a bad thing, but something different. Bark Psychosis have the same lush organicism that Talk Talk got into, but there's something very on-the-mark about their approach. I listen to 'Pendulum Man', which is the longest track here, and there are some definitely gorgeous soundscapes in there but also the slighest tendency towards repetitive rhythmic structures. Whatever everyone was calling 'post-rock' in the 90s may have actually been, it was rooted in stuff like Laughing Stock but then split and traveled in various directions. Hex is absolutely gorgeous but it was a fork, and maybe along the way that road led through Radiohead, Hood, maybe Fridge or Four Tet -- and then back to Bark Psychosis when they finally released Codename:Dustsucker (which I surely would have jizzed over if I heard it in 2000 but it came too late to claim any of my already-ravaged attention span. Sadly). I know I'm not doing them any service to keep comparing Hex to Talk Talk, but BP also struck me as extremely British (like British Petroleum, another BP acronym?) and even though Talk Talk were British too, I think Hollis' influences were far more American. Hex was always a little disturbingly close to all of those scary things I associated with British music in the 90's: clubs, flashing lights, electronic beats, synthetic drugs and weird London slang. Of course that's mostly off-base because this is really slow, introspective music that makes grand gestures towards beauty, dissonance and texture. But I still hear it - this is a band that is making fantastic, powerful music with a pile of gear and expensive recording technology. This is not four guys in a garage with a few effects pedals. Some tracks, like 'Absent Friend', have parts that remind me of traditional/medieval folk music actually - even though it clicks into a more 'modern' sound. Throughout Hex, there are some lovely rhythms and the sounds of various instruments going in and out of phase with each other through their melodic cycles. The lyrics are there and the singing needs to be heard, but the words don't matter. I probably listened to this record at least 30 times back in the day, and it feels very familiar, although it still feels new. This is music that doesn't dig into my brain; it floats overtop and makes millions of synaptic connections each time I heard it, but has never quite become "mine". Maybe I'm just saying that it doesn't have obvious hooks, no hit song, nothing so obvious. Whenever there's the old debate about Appolonian vs. Dionysian sound, I wonder where Bark Psychosis score - they seem to be somewhat beyond such classifications.