The title concept of this latest EP by Press, a one-man Electronica act fronted by Robin Smith, is a clever self-parody of the CD release as a "white label" test pressing. Perhaps it is a bit too fitting, since most of these six instrumental tracks indeed sound like they're still in a beta-testing, un-vetted, embryonic stage. The music itself is enjoyable, with bombastic and moderately syncopated drum tracks that could serve to boost a DJ set somewhere in the middle of the mix, but by itself is altogether without distinction. Only the last two titles, "Still" and "1000 Tiny Feet," stir the blood to any significant degree.

It's more difficult than ever before to tell how electronic music is made, as sounds of familiar, once-recognizable keyboards and synths that you used to be able to name by ear are replaced by faceless, anonymous, PC-bound digital audio. You begin to wonder how lost we're going to feel after the PC finally takes over completely -- hopefully on future Press releases, Smith won't allow himself to succumb to this great Nothing.

Not unlike predecessors Ec8or or Atari Teenage Riot, Next Life's 14-track opus of short, aggressive keyboard-crunch attacks represents a combinaton of the ultimate of artiness in Electronica plus all the mayhem of the video gaming realm. The songs from this young Oslo-based duo (Hai Nguyen Dinh and Tormod Christensen), spare and stripped down as Scandinavian furniture, are all starkly minimal keyboard instrumentals hitting out in every sonic direction, accompanied by Metal guitar. In fact, their record company's website description of them as "Gameboy Deathmetal" is probably the most apt. Sounds that imitate cheap chirping telephones (track 10, "Circle and Star") or a screechy old dial-up modem (track 13, "The Way Out") make it clear that these boys enjoy making monsters out of junk tech. Meter and rhythm change-ups in these mainly 2-1/2-minutes-or-less compositions move fast enough to make you nauseous, but nevertheless most have a (dare I say it) jazzy or symphonic melodic quality, with progressions you can follow. Pure, frenetic speed is set off by a couple of twin slow tracks of twinkly synth bells, "Under Water" and "Storm" (tracks 5 and 12), recalling "Star 6 & 7,8,9" from the first Orb album -- a possible nod to Ambient influence. The CD comes with a short series of live concert video clips, a nice little bonus. Their puerile brashness borders on dischord, but Next Life are earnestly not trying to be unlistenable; they have immense future potential and there is complexity and method to the madness. In this case, you can take their enthusiasm at face value and come out ahead.

While for some Drum & Bass may be an acquired taste, there's no denying the quality and craftsmanship of the selections in Dieselboy's collection of recent tracks, The Human Resource. In this 2-disc set, twelve of Human System-released prime cuts stand individually on the first CD, whereas on the second one these tracks -- along with many others -- are woven into a continuous mix. The artwork reflects a cool Frankensteinian, 19th-century-Eugenics theme of "Assembling the Monster," i.e. the mix of Disc Two.

The style is (you guessed it) fast and hard-hitting, as all good D&B should be, anthemic and yet with grit and edge. "Mass Hysteria," track 2 of Disc 1, contains a rather funny sampled pastiche of a TV preacher's histrionics ("Dogs and cats living together!!"). Track 9, "Barrier Break" by Kaos featuring Messinian, has a militantly Crunk intro and breakdown, an interesting and logical twist to the familiar Jungle stylings. The spoken intro to Disc 2, which sounds like it was cribbed from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, is cheesy and a trifle embarassing, but other standout tracks from the first disc (Evol Intent & Fwon's "The Rapture" and DJ Fresh's "Wargames '03") carry the mix handily.

The Human Resource maintains a healthy ratio between media samples and guest vocals, a continuing trend in dance music. Disc 1 is somehow more remarkable as a whole, and may grow on you faster with repeated listenings all the way through, than if you were to encounter it at the dance club, but fuck it, it's all got plenty of voltage.

Edward Ka-Spel regrouped his Dots last year (including long-time members Phil Knight and Martijn de Kleer) for a 25th anniversary U.S. tour, releasing this album for the occasion. Premature Graves is as darkly minimal as a stage set for a Beckett play, calculated to induce an existential complex upon the uninitiated. From the grave, dub-inflected second track "No Matter What You Do" through the hungover susurrations of "Please Don't Get Me Wrong" to the sad acoustic guitar of "The Island of Our Dreams" and beyond, Ka-Spel takes you on a broken-brained journey in his trademarked, affected English lilt -- as only the likes of Syd Barrett or Peter Gabriel in his Genesis days could have previously embarked upon, perhaps with Genesis P-Orridge driving the bus. "Stigmata (Part 4)" is the deepest, darkest spot on the record, a slow, grieving hymn set to piano, synth and organ. There is an oddly folky, nursery-rhyme quality in places; you hear a schoolyard full of children keening behind a childlike piano melody on the opener, "Count On Me." This and its twin with an identical piano line, "Your Number Is Up," bookend the whole disc, but this merely establishes the institutional, asylum-like setting within which Ka-Spel's reveries of quiet, personal desolation and madness unfold.

The lyrical theme is a disturbed stew of musings on redemption, forgiveness, and the ravages of time on mind and body, mumbled and whispered from the point of view of a disturbed man's memories. A few of the sing-song and narrative elements are whimsical enough to hearken back to '60s psychedelia; the more lighthearted track "Feathers at Dawn" makes it tempting to think of this album as a darker, more dissonant and somber cousin to the Small Faces album Ogden's Nut Gone Flake. But a broad range of percussion, instrumentation and sonic textures covers an equally broad range of styles, making this disc difficult to categorize, and justifiably so.

Toward the end of the CD, "The Made Man's Manifesto" lifts you up with arrangements and effects anomalous to the rest of the record, from its staccatto distorted-organ riff to its lazy, lolling slide guitar. From mid-song it all jells and goes riding into the sunset, culminating in an extended jam, a genuinely inspiring bit of relief from the gloom. Imagine a more perfect union amongst Industrial minimalism, psychedelic guitar and a better, more virtuous touch of New Age, and we pretty much have the picture.

As far as the tour and this record is concerned, the LPD remain an item to watch, for refusing to be put in a box all these years, and fans ought not to have been the least bit disappointed. A long, strange trip indeed.

Haunting and brooding dark ambient offering from Germany's fatagaga, third in a series named after that famous, delicious, opium-laced drink. It's a great, slow-moving, continuous wall of sound that breaks things up by jumping to a rhythm track in places, but is somehow a bit predictable and lacks an essential element of "surprise." Think of Richard H. Kirk teaming up with Hungry Ghost and you'll get an idea of the overall sound.

The review copy came without any CD packaging (the main run is a limited edition of 250, and strangely enough it is now also available in a box set with Vols. 1 and 2). All that was provided was a 3.5"-by-4" slip of paper with a yet elegant and apt description of the music (which can be read from the Satori Hype website): "Laudanum Vol. 3 is about dirt. The end of longing for pure Mother Nature...Old men burn garbage in back alleys...Lichens on the walls. Crooked, windblown scarecrows. Monocultures. A dead dog in the bushes. [etc]." A suggestion: an ambient release shouldn't need a verbal description at all, for the listener to get what's going on in the music. The CD artwork usually does help set the mood, and since it's missing in this case (it can also be viewed on their website, but at such very low resolution that the printed text is illegible), Vol. 3 loses a star.