Avant-jazz quartet Etron Fou Leloublan seem to represent a legacy of sorts. Apparently part of a movement called "Rock In Opposition" (RIO), EFL existed and toured extensively in the United States and all over Europe in the early 1980s. This CD, Les Sillons de la Terre ("The Furrows of the Earth") is the re-release of their penultimate recording in 1983. The band had swapped talent among the likes of Fred Frith, who produced their prior album, Les Poumons Gonflés. I don't think it would be at all a stretch to say that EFL utlimately came to serve as a bridge from classic French pop and film music of the 1960s and '70s to the neo-retro-lounge stylings of Stereolab and Air. As far as I can tell, the avant scene they came from may not have been an isolated occurrence in recent musical history. Les Sillons sounds like genuine black-beret-wearing-existential-poetry-reading music, folks, and about half of the songs contain poetic platitudes loudly intoned all in French by either Ferdinand Richard (bass), Jo Thirion (piano and organ), or Guigou Chenevier (drums and tenor sax), in place of lyrics per se. Whether the songs be about a bathroom sink, people from Alsace, or Guigou's childhood, they are a fun opportunity to dust off that French dictionary you haven't used since high school. This provocatively upbeat recording would also go perfectly well with a trip to the beach with a bottle of your favorite cabernet, or perhaps a round of the Milles Bournes card game with your postmodernist philosopher buddies. Oui, I say.

Scottish instrumental artist(s) De Trop create a compelling Ambient landscape of solemn tonal washes of gloom and nursery-like melodies. Colin Laughland and (only occasionally) Krist Moran use "only guitar, an out-of-tune piano, some cracked voices, red wine and a screwdriver," in their own words. This description fits very well, but the whole is for sure a lot greater than the sum of those parts. There are no lyrics; the melody lines and progressions, some in major and some in minor keys, are in a few of the longer songs interrupted by interesting, haunting patches of eerie noises and weird loops. In one such, during "Angels Hanging From a Rope in a Darkened Room," you can definitely imagine seeing ghosts.

While I enjoy very much the timbres and textures of these tracks, in general they don't quite go into risky enough territory. A good example of what I mean by "risky" would be any release by the German artist known as Gas -- DT's most Gas-like tracks being "Cracked Bleeding Lips and Red Shoes" and "She Hangs From a Rope That Look of Lovelovelove." (Do you catch the hanging-from-ropes theme, here? *Brrrrrr*....) My CD copy of After the Water arrived with severe water damage during shipping, with paper pulp sticking to the disc. After it was scraped off, the CD is now playable only on my Mac, and so I very probably missed many other sonic subtleties on it. For those of you even halfway serious about the Ambient genre, I say go to the Flash-heavy Skean Dhu website and buy it, just to be on the safe side.

Anglo-Italian veterans of all kinds of Industrial noise, XP8 emerged after their previous group, Retina, called it quits. Now, collaborators Marco Visconti, Marko Resurreccion and Paul Toohill bring a staggering variety of influences and experience to the table. As much of a stickler as I am for originality, when their description lists everybody from Bauhaus to ClockDVA to the Chemical Brothers to Coil to VNV Nation, I see no problem with that, because on this 15-track CD, XP8 combines them all--I mean ALL--and makes it work. I can't really understand why they felt the need to put out a "Remastered USA Version" of this disc, but make no mistake, it hits hard and fast and gets the job done. It opens with the sound of an orchestra tuning up, and then goes ballistic from there. All the aforementioned musical sources come to fruition in each track, if mostly using an anthem formula. The lyrics, too, have just the right balance of poetic meanness versus dancefloor-mandated simplicity to get the message across. This "Remastered USA Version" has a bonus track, "Your Heat," that goes: "I don't need your mind to make me complete,/So open your legs and give me your heat." Ironically (and unfortunately, for us guys) over here in the Land of the Free, using that as a pick-up line will not get you very far, but that alone scores points with me on sheer balls. Is this an essential part of your dancefloor arsenal, you ask? I think it is.

For most new listeners of experimental music that is classical in instrumentation and structure, Emily Hay is like no other artist you have ever heard before. Her new CD, Like Minds, is a tour de force of voice and flute laid over percussion and a small orchestra of instruments ranging from bass to brass and woodwinds to "electronics" and "field recordings." When I say "voice," by the way, I mean that she uses her voice purely as an instrument: animal growls, yelps and clacks, baby talk, gutteral rumblings and other utterances, occasionally followed by classical operatic passages to temper the mix. Now, it's quite a lot to get used to, and it's by no means your typical EBM thud, but it's serious avant-modern-classical music made FUN, okay? Just listen: the opener, "Call to Unarm," evokes a primitive, deep jungle-y atmosphere. The aforementioned percussion and flute take center stage, while her vocals only subtly jut out of the mostly free-form musical tapestry. But her singing jumps out into full prominence on track number 6, "We Are"--pre-verbal, glossolalic vocalizing, sung rhythmically and staccatto to the instrumentation. On "Waiting for Sara," track 10, her vocals even sound sexual--especially if you expand that particular thought balloon to include feline as well as human interplay. Track number 8, "Wha' 'Bout," features cool background samples--a hint of machinery shadowing the acoustic drumming. The second and last tracks have (respectively) my favorite tonal and chordal structures on the disc: "Liturgy of Sound" is echoey and dreary, and "Swamp Moss" is simply bluesy, with hypnotic, droning guitar twang.

The tracks for Like Minds were recorded all over southern California between 1994 and last year, in both live and studio situations. I, who also live here in La-La land, am starting to wonder what could possibly have kept me from attending an Emily Hay performance, aside from sheer obliviousness to my surroundings. And on top of all that talent, she's a high-flying music law professional who could pass for your average So. Cal. surf babe (blonde and pretty, that is.) Anyone who can't dig such an unbeatable combination doesn't know what the word "fun" means.

A self-produced and -released solo artist out of North Little Rock, Arkansas, Jerry Colburn provides many moments of brilliance with "Smell the Love", a CD of instrumental passages and interludes. Contrary to the title's riff on Spinal Tap, most of what you hear are two- to three-minute instrumental programmed drum loops that have a sort of hip-hop feel, festooned with Rhodes piano and organ sounds, and flavored with acoustic guitar and varied percussion. Although various influences are mentioned in his description sheet, to me this release is a lot more closely related to DJ Shadow than to Esquivel. The tones and textures are too diverse to pin him down, anyhow: mathematically idiotic chord progressions that somehow make perfect sense, passages which draw you into the plot of some intriguing movie even though all you have is its soundtrack. The music almost doesn't want to be taken seriously, but I insist it really is good, if you hear it through a good enough stereo and speakers (or headphones). Indeed, though, with song titles like "Buzzy the Squirrel", "Evening in Newark", "Shellfish Bop", and "Dildo Baggage Car", it's hard to keep a straight face, but that's probably Colburn's intent. And it seems that Mr. Colburn was a longtime drummer for punk, garage and improv bands, gigging all over his home state, until now deciding to move into the wonderful world of Experimental Electronica. Welcome, Jerry. (Although I have to dock half a star for the baby picture.)