Prefuse 73 - Preparations Electronic musician Guillermo Scott Herren, a.k.a. Prefuse 73, has spent years building some of the most elaborate and abstract hip-hop productions on the market today; thing is, they’re aren’t really on the market. Rather than auctioning his wares to the highest bidder, Herren weaves his tracks together into loose instrumental albums, bringing in a guest MC if he feels like it. Preparations, his latest, features plenty of vocals, but barely any......

Great Lake Swimmers Ongiara (Nettwerk) Ongiara sees Great Lake Swimmers move a little further into country with prominent banjo strums and unforgiving Nashville-esque male/female harmonies. The themes are still dark, open and intimidating, never belying the band's daunting name. Production-wise, the songs are gorgeous: layers of acoustic guitars over a banjo and reverberating snare never sounded better. Tony Dekker's voice is straight out of the old dance hall and as slide guitars subtly make......

Welcome back kiddos, the year is kicking off with a shotgun bang. Head over to Waterloo or End of an Ear and ask for these albums: as far as we can tell, it's hard to go wrong this week. The Shins Wincing the Night Away (Sub Pop) Well, they're definitely stretching, and they're definitely getting more and more familiar with the studio, as "Phantom Limb" demonstrates: James Mercer is still having trouble falling asleep,......

Since 1996, Tom Jenkinson, the Englishman also known as Squarepusher, has been giving us music that has, up to this point, combined live jazz instrumentation and computer-generated electronica with fascinating results. Squarepusher, the son of a jazz drummer, is essentially a virtuosic jazz bassist who discovered the electronic medium of computerized sequencing late in his musical development. As such, Squarepusher has actually been able to fully express the jazz influence latent in the IDM genre,......