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The Notwist Shrink (Big Store/Brilliant)
Jad Fair & Yo La Tengo Strange But True (Matador) Indie-rock-jukebox heroes Yo La Tengo improvise under uber-naïf Jad Fair's spoken-nose lyrics inspired by tabloid headlines (sample: "Minnesota Man Claims Monkey Bowled Perfect Game"). The whole thing adds up to 22 strange-but-true songs in 41 minutes. This one sounds a little better on paper than in your CD player, unless you're a Fair freak--but that's probably redundant. 7/10 (Chris Yurkiw) Nuclear Ramjet Age of Aquarius (Ascend)
DJ Laflèche Montreal Mix Sessions Vol. 2 (Turbo) Volume two of these homegrown mix sessions features DJ Laflèche, sultan of swing at Sona's Tease Saturday nights, recorded live from his main room throne. The boys at Turbo, still on a high from the first volume, are gearing up for what is sure to be a second success. The contents of this smartly designed and packaged CD contain a flawlessly mixed hard house set, featuring, among others Roger Sanchez and our own DJ Mateo. 8.5/10 (Krista) All City Metropolis Gold (Universal) "Our album is like days in a week," explains Greg. "They all different. One day, you get up and don't care about nothin'. One day you real happy. One day you sad." If I'm to take this rating scale to heart, this album has a couple good days, and several bad ones. Successfully rocking mix tapes almost two years before this release, songs like "Metro Theme" and "The Actual" still hold up, but the rest are like a Monday morning after a rough weekend. 6.5/10 (Scott C) New Power Generation New Power Soul (NPG/Outside)
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Stereolab have long championed the more earthbound elements of '70s krautrock, like Can and Faust. It's only natural that they (and Portishead, too) now take the descendants of that sound under their wings. One such lucky bunch of contestants is the Notwist. They fly the flag of Weilheim, a German town that's become a factory outlet for this sort of tuneful experimentation. Both sad and slyly funny, raw and precisely refined, this is hallucino-tronic prog pop updated for the Playstation generation. 8/10 (Rupert Bottenberg)
Montreal-based group Nuclear Ramjet gear up to take our city by psychedelic storm with their first full-length release on their own label. Aeon, Nivoc and Miracle Flash, whose collective minds and souls make up Nuclear Ramjet, have created a journey into space through a portal of trance music. The sound is reminiscent of Goa-trance labels like Blue Room and Dragonfly, but with a warmer appeal. 7.5/10 (Krista) CD launch at Sona's Free Bamboo Butterfly, Friday, Nov. 27, 11pm, $20
Say what you want about the artist formerly known as what's-his-name, he do do some fine funkin'. It's amazing that, after six trillion records, he can still deliver an album as crisp and tight as this one. This time, on his own label, there are no political overtones: sex and funk rule the roost, from the opening thump of "Mad Sex" to the closing boom of "Funky Music." New power generation indeed. 7.5/10 (Gerard Dee)