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I have to admit that I’m relatively new to this genre, so my interest in it is fundamentally lacking in any historical context. But I knows what I likes, and this is gripping stuff. In my flirtations with this kind of minimalistic, abstract electronica, I’ve found that it’s difficult to achieve a balance between a commitment to experimentalism and sheer listenability, but I think Ryoji Ikeda succeeds. Though largely formless, save for at most skeletal rhythms, his new album Test Pattern is immediately engaging merely through its monochromatic, microtonal textures. It skitters and pops at a sometimes frantic pace, crackling, buzzing, and ringing in enough varied ways that I’m truly never bored by it. If you’ve been avoiding “amelodic nonsense” like this, here’s an opportunity to have your mind changed. I only hope it’ll lead me to more things that surprise me in the same way.

It seems Ratatat are getting ready to follow up their 2006 sophomore release Classics, which I thought was leaps and bounds above their debut self-titled, and certainly one of my favorites from that year, if not this decade. Two weeks ago they released the single Shiller, whose A-side you can listen to here. Both tracks are creepy and less beat-driven than their recent stuff, for sure, and I’m glad to see them reaching again this time around. “Shiller” will be featured on their forthcoming LP, LP3, which Evan Mast describes as being “wildly different than anything we’ve done” as well as “by far the best album we’ve ever made,” in this interview with Audiojunkies. Hey that sounds promising doesn’t it.

To supplement this track are two oldies; the first is “What We Meant,” from Evan’s solo outing, Parking Lot Music, which he released under the name E*Vax in 2001 on his own Audio Dregs imprint. Have fun browsing the Wayback Machine’s archives for E*Vax, Cherry, and Ratatat, notably Cherry’s first two websites, the parts where Evan announces his new band, and where Cherry change their name to Ratatat on September 15, 2003.

Oh yeah, and the third track I’m including is from 9 Beats, a mysterious 2006 bootleg about which little is known, but which was seemingly first reported by i guess im floating, and whose story remains at bittersweet being, and which Wikipedia reports as having been used in a CSI episode.

And finally, the cover art to LP3, scheduled for a July 8 release date:

Although I love listening to Breakfast of Champions each morning, there are actually very few times I’m compelled to take note of any particular thing they play. But this morning I heard “Family Romance” by Department of Eagles, and had to call in make sure I got their name.

Department of Eagles is a duo composed of Daniel Rossen (of Grizzly Bear) and Fred Nicolaus. The song, while amazing, didn’t represent the full range of what they do. I was able to snag a copy of The Cold Nose; it’s a surprisingly varied blend of odd samples (strings, piano, spoken word), electronic manipulations, drum machine, acoustic/electric guitar, vocal choruses, and probably several other things I’m forgetting. The pervasive hip-hop leanings — which tend to be dark, DJ Shadow-inspired dalliances — are probably most exemplified in “Forty Dollar Rug,” a tongue-in-cheek glorification of bachelor life (“Forty dollar rug/ Twenty dollar lamp/ Playstation 2/ Tony Hawk 4”).

Meanwhile, they don’t mind sounding like Radiohead at times, in their creepy, Kid A-like harmonies, albeit backed by weird things Radiohead would probably never touch.

The Cold Nose was originally released in 2003 under a different title, and was just reissued this year with some bonus tracks; for my money, it’s better than anything Rossen has done with Grizzly Bear, and I’m sorry to have only come across it so recently. The project is, as far as I can tell, defunct.

Songs of Green Pheasant is the recording name of Duncan Sumpner, originally of England, and residing now in California. I’ll be damned if I can remember where I heard about Aerial Days, 2006’s follow-up EP to his debut LP of 2005, but for a while in June it soundtracked my falling asleep at night.

Anyway I just got a hold of his new LP, Gyllyng Street, and it’s pretty beautiful. Accusations of freak-folkdom weren’t totally unfounded before, but I think this release will help to abolish that miscategorization. It’s gauzy, even a little shoegazey, and, admittedly, kind of pastoral. But its chugging momentums and electronic flourishes recall Bibio, Chessie, Caribou at times (due to the vocal quality, I think), and I swear I even hear a little Joy Division. “West Coast Profiling” is particularly great, rattling along gracefully for five minutes before morphing into a bleak, funereal electric guitar line, soaring, unidentifiable pipes, and thumping, tambourine-led percussion. A great soundtrack to the falling temperatures.

I first encountered this album years ago, when somebody mentioned it in a forum thread about favorite album art. The cover is certainly intriguing, with that fat sans (Futura?) and the glowing purple mountain — and like all good album art, it really lends something to the sound it’s representing. The DC band does a kind of chugging, throbbing, ambient dronescape thing, which is typically more formless than the tracks I’m sharing here. Overnight is their third and most recent LP, from 2001.

I’m not sure whether “Chessie” is a reference to “the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway’s former holding company, the Chessie System,” or “a legendary sea monster supposedly living in the Chesapeake Bay,” but it seems to me that both meanings offer a perspective on their sound.