"We are unique, or are we? What is it about you that makes you different from other people? People say that dogs have a personality. So is that what you are? What makes you unique? Show me."

A limey voice with a grimey accent intones this at the beginning of 'Ignition Key', album opener from Personality, the third full length from Hotflush Recordings label head and dubstep pioneer Paul Rose, aka Scuba. Paul Rose has produced some of the darkest, dankest, most innovative and forward-thrusting dubstep producer out there, refining its cannon-fire bass drops and ratchety percussion to a deadly efficient machine. Imagine my surprise when i fired up Personality, expecting to find more midnight dub anthems and discovering instead a full-bore Techno record, destined to soundtrack 1001 laser-lit fog filled nights. Forsaking the monochromatic dread he perfected on previous albums Triangulation and A Mutual Antipathy, on Personality has created a more colorful, dare i say, FUN record.

Listening closer, Scuba's hallmarks are present, just reconfigured: the basketball bass thuds, the gear-shifting glitch textures, the crisp clear production, but this time around Paul Rose uses his bag of tricks as an aspect of the music, subliminally slipping them into 12 tracks of bangers and anthems. 'The Hope,' with its Fatboy Slim R&B vox and its deep dubby bass is the best example of this subliminal warfare, it could be a Daft Punk track. DJs are gonna love this one, with its surgically precise builds and breaks, its churning rave synths, its tectonic beats. I get the sense that Scuba is making fun of this sugary club music, but secretly loves it, and sees its potential as full-on body music! He is making music to drive dancers into a frenzy.

With the singles out of the way, Scuba gets down to business, a non-stop barrage of the best electronic music free of genre, picking and choosing from all of them. His experience as a producer, running a label, and as a DJ, has honed his music to a diamond's edge, and there is something here for every single person that digs dance music. I hear hints of early weird British dubstep, there's bits of Detroit techno, there's 90s big beat reverence. There's murky darkness, and adrenalized bursts of light. Personality is sexy, funny, thought-provoking; it will sound great at clubs, and works triply well on headphones.

With Personality, Scuba has shown us what makes him unique, what makes him special; an experienced musician and producer with no boundaries, who ultimately makes music that he likes and that he wants to listen to. Very highly recommended.

Gultskra Artikler is the electro-acoustic endeavor of Alexey Devjatin, currently residing in Moscow. Abtu Anet is his third release for the exquisite Miasmah Recordings, and it compiles two previously available EPs, Abtu and Anet, and gives them the loving devotion they deserve.

Listening to Abtu Anet is like visiting a phantom Ukrainian village, of an indeterminate era, and then diving into the hidden desires and R.E.M. sleep of its inhabitants. Starting off on a tuneful note with 'Berezka', a ringing folk melody on an acoustic guitar with a pagan undercurrent of distant horns and temple bells, the record quickly takes a turn for the fucked up with 'In The Middle of the Sixteenth Century,' a musique concrete piece of parlor piano and toppling percussion that sounds like rattling air ducts, that will make you feel like yr plasma has been replaced with Knox Gelatin.

The song/noise/song/noise template is adhered to, giving the sensation of drifting in and out of a reverie, but even the 'songs' are skewed: tape warped, embellished with static, zithers and bells, before settling into 'Pirat', probably the prettiest piece of the whole bunch - a dark walnut baby grand rings out a dusty Ravel dirge, with sonar bleeps from the very deep, providing a soothing bass rumble dissonance. There is no bedrock, here, nothing solid to build upon. This village flickers like static.

The noise takes over from this point forward, probably where the Anet EP takes over; at times it is nearly incomprehensible! Detuned harmonicas ebb and flow, vinyl ghosts whisper in archaic dialects (i wish i knew what they were saying), frequencies and fuzz percussion vie for attention, in yr ear ducts. It takes a special brand of cosmonaut to withstand such lunacy, but those that persevere will be rewarding with sensual, surreal images.

Much post-criticism will probably be heaped upon this record, seeking a coherent thread to help navigate Abtu Anet's convoluted labyrinth, but i feel like Alexey Devjatin's struggling with the same question the avant-garde has been wrestling with for 100 years: how best to combine recordings, machine noises, acoustic instruments, composition and improvisation into a tenable, viable whole. Looking for mastery, finding mystery. Alexey Devjatin proves himself to have a deft hand and ear, composerly instincts, but i feel like if he had a clearer notion of what he was driving at, to begin with, at least an outline if not a script, his records might be more coherent and palatable to a wider populace. Still, i listened to Abtu Anet at least a dozen times while putting these words together, and had unique revelations and experiences each time. This record is a must for noise fiends and experimental hounds, a perfect late-night brain burner! But if you are looking for familiar footholds like 'melody', 'lyrics', 'structure,' if you like yr music to go POP! then you better look elsewhere. Abtu Anet will give you bad dreams.

Listening to Windy & Carl always makes me think of something immense - like on 1997's Antarctica, with all its frosty ruminations. On We Will Always Be, the landscapes are much balmier, the drones sunnier. A bright yellow sunflower adorns the cover of this record, and the music contained within is a welcome thaw to cynicism and ennui.

We Will Always Be started as a Valentine's Gift to Windy from Carl, in response to her solo record, i hate people. Carl spent 18 months dreaming up the material that would become the backbone for these 8 tracks. Windy provides vocals on 4 of these tracks, a very rare occurrence in the W & C ouevre, and it gives a human element to the monolithic sound sculptures, a warm and beating pulse, most notably on 'For Rosa' with its ringing acoustic guitar, the most folksy Windy & Carl track so far, and they wear it well, they do it justice. Windy shouldn't be so shy about her vocals.

The eight tracks that comprise we will always be work as a collective flow, a journey, a daydream; it starts off sparse and builds to an amniotic lava flow that congeals with the album closer, 'Fainting in the Presence of the Lord.' They conjure an astounding array of tones with the rudimentary palette of guitar, pedals, fender rhodes, voice... old school drone, perfected. What you are left with is a suitable soundtrack for daydreaming and staring out the window, or walking at sunset, or spending all night drawing and reading poetry to someone that you love. This music is not merely auditory wallpaper, however, there is poignancy and passion swimming beneath its hypercolor surface. It is subtle and soft-spoken. We Will Always Be is like a sunbeam on yr bedroom wall, even in the depths of night.

Windy & Carl have been plying dreamscapes since 1993, over an impressive array of albums, singles, spread out over various record labels before settling in at the magnificent Kranky Records, out of Chicago. They are a married couple that run a record store in Dearborn, Mi called Stormy Records, named after their cat. They recorded an album in honor of a dead dog. They seem to genuinely like each other. They crack jokes on stage - wry self-effacing humor. They are truly committed to art, to music, to making the world a dreamier, more loving place. They are colossi of the ambient/drone world, but they're always adventuring, conjuring new worlds and perspectives. Exploring their music, refining their love. It is a pleasure to have a new record. We Will Always Be will be my soundtrack for the budding Spring.

'Everyone has ghosts', says Alejandra Deheza, the voice of School of Seven Bells. 'They're every love you've ever had, every hurt, every betrayal, every heartbreak. They follow you, stay with you.' Ghostory tells the story of Lafaye, a young girl surrounded by ghosts.

There's something ghostly about Alejandra Deheza's vocals; she remains detached, aloof, drifting above the beats and soundscapes conjured by guitarist/producer Benjamin Curtis. Mining the rich ore of gloomy British music from the past 3 decades, they condense and refine Bernard Sumner's ringing guitars, like on album opener 'The Night', with submersive dubstep sub-bass, with Deheza's vocals sprinkled like confectioner's sugar over slick club beats, to create a mutant strain of darktranceshoegaze. With a distinctive DSP sheen, reminiscent of Ulrich Schnauss or M83's epic grandeur, there is also a decided lack of grit and muscle. Many have declared this record destined for high-end clothing boutiques and cafe's the world over, best to be politely ignored, but it successfully evokes an otherworldly quality, like being wrapped in cotton or sterile gauze. It is the sound of a detached eye, floating through hyper-saturated, overly colorful streets, feeling like a stranger.

On Ghostory, SVIIB have pared down to a duo, after the departure of longtime member Claudia Deheza, making Ghostory a more intimate, organic affair, with Alejandra Deheza and Ben Curtis jamming and writing in real-time, more of an interplay than a bricolage of bric-a-brac, but i still don't get the feeling that they are in a room together, like they're afraid to look at each other. Alejandra Deheza is the wind; Curtis is the rising tide.

The superb production guarantees that Ghostory will sound great through a club's PA, and tracks like 'Low Times' or 'White Winds', with their infectious disco grooves, will be instant DJ favorites, with the gorgeous and open 'Reappear' will slacken the ecstacy hangover. School of Seven Bells have released an impressive body of work, so far, and they show themselves to be constantly evolving. I saw them live, at a Ghostly International showcase in Seattle this last summer, and was blown away by their stage-show, more Radiohead than Tiesto, and proved to me that School of Seven Bells, and almost everything on Ghostly International, is worth paying attention to.

Paintings for Animals is a solo-project of Pær Sv, a sweet noise drone magician operating up here in the Pacific Northwest. He is the originator of the Seattle Occultural Music Festival. He's got the usual prodigious pyrochastic flow commonly found amongst noise musicians. On Thee Body ov Worship, out on House of Alchemy, he has manufactured 40 minutes of interstellar drift, split between the two halves of the cassette. Like Uroboros Thee Body ov Worship works well as a locked groove time warp, the two lengthy compositions, 'Moon Psalm' and 'Sun Psalm' chase each other across the sky, feedbacking into each other, dovetailing...

Like the best kosmische music, Thee Body ov Worship gives a euphoric sense of weightlessness. But this void is neither cold nor dead, it is like floating in navy blue ink full of stars. I couldn't get enough of this one, spinning it over and over, after my roommate and i conjured the plateau of leng out of thin air. I was in a pleasant lull, Thee Body ov Worship unspooling around me like a Persian Tiger. It reminds me a lot of an album by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma that came out a few years ago, Floating Weeds, that i used to listen to a lot as i was raking leaves. People that like Brian Eno's 'Discreet Music', wish that Lustmord would cheer up just a little bit , or Natural Snow Building's monumental effigies will dig this. They only made 75 of these, so don't miss it.

It looks like House of Alchemy is putting out a mad array of quality goods, i will be keeping an eye out.