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Artist: MASSIVE ATTACK
Title: 100TH. WINDOW
Label: Virgin
Link: www.100thwindow.com
Root: UK/Electronica
More than a decade after Massive Attack's 1991 debut Blue Lines, their impact still echoes in almost everywhere in music today. With sparse releases received with quasi messianic fervor by fans and critics alike, the band repeatedly demonstrated that there's no tougher act to follow than their own, daring to push their boundaries further into genre defying territories. Following this creative process, 100th. Window is the album that almost never was, born from miles of scratch tape from a dead end studio session with members of Spiritualized. Every Massive Attack album till now exposed its influences openly through sampling, but performing original music makes the tributes less obvious. References to Dub and Soul are now replaced by a haunted soundscape that follows Radiohead and Sigur Ros' lyrical path to a chilled dehumanized world, where the human soul struggles to survive. Only Sinnead O'Connor's vocals, emerging from within endless layers of sounds, soar to give melancholy and sorrow the gothic splendor akin to Dead Can Dance and Cocteau Twins' early work, while ethnic orchestrations and tribal textures provide a cinematic scope not heard since Peter Gabriel's Passion. 100th. Window serves as a final warning, a meditative experience in total immersion, a last ditch effort to resuscitate the waning soul that connects us all, or write its epitaph.

Artist: GROOVE ARMADA
Title: LOVEBOX
Label: Jive
Link: www.groove-armada.com
Root: UK/Pop-Electronica
Bored with the genre attribution and pigeon-holing of past successes, Andy Cato and Tom Findlay indirectly produce the definitive manifesto for 21st. Century british pop. Named after their bi-monthly London Club night, Groove Armada's Lovebox exhudes the raw feel of a live band (though Cato here plays most instruments in the studio) enlisting Neneh Cherry, Richie Havens, The London Community Gospel Choir, MC's Nappy Roots, M-A-D and Kriminal to provide vocals, rhymes and Dance Hall jitters to original new songs, not sampled classics, while broadening their musical spectrum to include house, blues, ska, punk, funk and soul. Moving away from the redundancy of DJ sets, this maverick mutation towards rock antics seems designed to elude trend setters, jump start the party into a feisty affair, as well as bring the sweat of a full live act to future concert stages.

Artist: GILLES PETERSON
Title: TRUST THE DJ GP03
Label: Jive
Link: www.gillespeterson.com and www.trustthedj.com
Root: UK/ Various
Gilles Peterson, the Swiss born London based groove guru who always plays "it" first, holds on to his reputation as originator on his third selection for the Trust The DJ series. Offering comfort to those mourning the deplorable cancellation of his show Worldwide from the Los Angeles airwaves, Peterson lays down new grooves that have the authentic flavor of a classic, yet a unique forward thinking approach to blues, jazz, R&B and hip hop. By creating relationships between these eclectic styles, he demonstrates that they all stem from the same root: soul music. The names of artists like Peven Everett, Yesterday' New Quintet, J-Live and Shaun Escoffery, will be remembered one day like those of obscure jazz musicians, for having made daring new propositions and moved things forward. Reinforcing the dichotomy that the artists cannot expose themselves without a messenger, and that messenger, the DJ, wouldn't exist without their music, Trust THE DJ is dedicated to the promotion of both, offering originality and talent that cut through the overflow of trite and boring compilations that are as disposable as the plastic they're made of.

Artist: TIGA
Title: DJ KICKS
Label: !K7 Records
Link: www.tiga.ca
Root: Canada/ Electroclash
First of, let's settle the score. After a year long debate on "what should we call this new electro thing", New York's set the trend with Electroclash for having solidified the first US scene of the genre outside of S&M parlors. In this new arena, heroes are fighting for the crowning title, and with more hissy fits than a cat from Japan, Tiga is clawing his way through the battle as a Ziggy incarnation for a world of neon lights, cigarette smoke, and acid rain. His dirty, gritty and mean defiance to prefab aesthetics, clichés and trademark, stands the test of absurdity and delivers the best DJ mix of the genre to date. The post modern fascination of the 80's is replaced by an "empire on the brink of collapse" decadence, a dead end punk view that requires immediate attention and like backdoor sex provides no safety zone. Tiga is the fluffer that makes it stiffer than others, the bordello madam that whores out the new trends with exuberance and sass, equally at ease being the DJ, producer or remixer that may kick Miss Kitten off her throne.

Artist: FISCHERSPOONER
Title: #1
Label: Capitol Records
Link: www.fischerspooner.com
Root: US/ Electroclash
Born in the New York performance art scene from the warped visions of Warren Fischer and Casey Spooner, the collective comprised of music producers, artists, choreographers, film makers and fashion designers known as Fischerspooner, emerges from the junk pile as the new freak idols to pull the rug from under Marilyn Manson's platforms. A 2002 UK release of the album gained praises and recognition overseas, while seducing new found fan David Bowie, who personally requested their participation to the London Meltdown Festival. Dug out body parts from the early post punk era of Depeche Mode, Soft Cell, Gary Numan and Human League, where assembled to create a schizophrenic synth-rock Frankenstein that pays tribute to its many inspirations, without compromising its own stylish ambitions. With each performance an event, the US release is packaged as a full length DVD and album to capture the whole of the experience. As Fischerspooner finds its audience, the release of #1 by a major US label proves that Electroclash can no longer be discarded as an accident on the pop charts, and could mark the beginning of an exciting new artistic movement.

Artist: PEVEN EVERETT
Title: STUDIO CONFESSIONS
Label: ABB Records
Link: www.pias.com/peveneverett
Root: US/ R&B
Like Stevie Wonder, Prince and D'Angelo, multi instrumentist-singer-songwritter Peven Everett is the one breakthrough talent in a decade that redefines boundaries and lets his voice infiltrate the collective subconscious. His early experience as a vocalist for house producer Roy Davis Jr. provides him with a unique syncopation in the phrasing of his lyrics, both smooth, breathy and sexy, but also beat conscious, jamming as just another instrument amongst others. With musical influences rooted in latin and african rhythms, Studio Confessions is a high art experiment in soul, straying away from the narrow restrictive path of commercial R&B garbage. Still, a great love song is essentially where it's at, and Everett's words can be equally incisive, spiritual, romantic and witty. A "Worldwide" family member, his much sought after compositions have also appeared on many soul music compilations, expanding his exposure as a solo artist and asserting his place as a new champion for the genre.

Artist: CUICA
Title: CITY TO CITY
Label: Ubiquity Records
Link: www.ubiquityrecords.com
Root: UK/ Tropicalia
Borrowing their name from a traditional Brazilian drum, Cuica dwells in the realm where Afro Cuban and Brazilian rhythms collide with garage style house. The brainchild of Londoner Pete Herbert and Italian expat Simone Serritella, City to City is the kind of album only Ubiquity could release, dance savvy, yet animated with a world music spirit more samba than house, tailor-made to scorch dance floors following the international dateline from Rio to Tokyo. Typically, producers who use Latin rhythms layer them as background texture within the track's beat construction, but Cuica uses a reverse approach, allowing exotic samples to expand and build up into an hypnotic crescendo, creating a journey for the mind's eye, where jungle voodoo infiltrates the urban gloom and raises the pulse of the cityscape.

Artist: BOBBY HUGHES COMBINATION
Title: NHU GOLDEN ERA
Label: Stereo Deluxe
Link: www.stereodeluxe.com
Root: Norway/ Latin Jazz Electronica
Norway's recent proliferation of musical talent is the genuine surprise of the 21st. Century. Bobby Hughes Combination (aka DJ/producer Espen Horne) serves a healthy slice of Latin influenced jazz, with a tongue in cheek 70's lounge feel that deters any pretentiousness. Samples of great jazz records from Norway's past are used as a foundation, upon which the who's who of the country's musicians and singers build, extrapolate, improvise and rearrange with afro-cuban and Brazilian instrumentation. This work process adds to the "combination", a time loop which reconciles jazz classic antics with metropolitan hipness, which so far had been the trade of Japanese acts such as the Kyoto Jazz Massive and the Fantastic Plastic Machine. Even if a second hand artificial taste lingers, Nhu Golden Era is seductive and slick and floats better than olives in your cocktail, the perfect combination for the contemporary hipster in search of retro thrill.

Artist: TOSCA
Title: DEHLI 9
Label: !K7 Records
Link: www.g-stoned.com
Root: Austria/ Downtempo-Dub
Tosca has by now released so many albums, remixes, deconstruct ions, that it makes Richard Dorfmeister's other venture, Kruder and Dorfmeister, feel like a side project. Dehli 9 offers the same formula as Susuki, their prior album, a lush downtempo opus for jaded minds, where light snare shuffles play counterpart to deep and sensual bass lines, while every other element echoes to infinity in what has become the trademark Viennese dub sound. Rupert Huber's serves the other half of Tosca well, contributing sumptuous melodic arrangements and velvet textures to the ambient sound. Avoiding the excesses of layering, the production is more minimal, creating enough space for each element to expand and fade. A familiar cast of enigmatic female contributors lend their sensual voice to the intrigue, MCs season the mix with some Jamaican dance hall spice, while guest singer Earl Zinger does a quasi Lou Reedian turn up in pure brit grit style. Gently intoxicating like the smocked out evenings it inspires, Tosca's big bong theory creates new majestic realms from the spontaneous collision of classic musical training and the Protool tweaked out world.

Artist: ROOTS MANUVA
Title: BADMEANINGOOD
Label: Ultimate Dilemma
Link: www.ultimate-dilemma.com
Root: UK/ Hip Hop-various
Next in the Badmeaningood series, dedicated to broaden the musical scope and meaning of hip hop beyond clichés, Roots Manuva (aka Rodney Smith, a stalwart of UK hip hop) drops the needle all over the map with no connection between genres and eras, assembling a very personal grab bag reflecting his roots and sensibility. While there's some hip hop, NWA's rant shamelessly merges into Soul II Soul's sensual R&B. This impossible transition alone informs you of the good humor at work through the record, from his own shameless cover of the Fab Four's Yellow Submarine, to the "Oh no, here are the 80s" insertion of The Beat's ska anthem Mirror In The Bathroom, or FREEEZ top of the pops breakbeat nonsense I.O.U. Other protagonists, including Lucy Pearl, Outkast, Erik B and Rakim make the mix a more joyous trip than Willy Wonka going through the chocolate factory. As for the first album, the most excellent artwork designed by graffiti renegades Banksy graces the cover.

Artist: COMMON
Title: ELECTRIC CIRCUS
Label: MCA
Link: www.mcarecords.com
Root: US/ Hip Hop
Chicago born Common belongs to that other hip hop, the one which doesn't sell out, dedicated to its advancement as a cultural phenomenon, a testimony and legacy of the black american experience, not the "bling-bling" experience. Produced by Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson of the Roots, Electric Circus explores Common's new found nostalgia for the rock psychedelia of Jimi Hendricks and Woodstock, fusing a kaleidoscope of styles with his ever socially conscious rhyme and flow. Song after song unfold in a visionary hippy-hop tragi-comedy. If Common has fallen of the deep end, he's taken the whole Soul Train with him for the trip: Zap Mama, Erikah Badu, Mary J. Blije, Jill Scott, Bilal, Prince and Stereolab's Laetitia Sadier to name only the most famous half of the endless talent list that populates every note. Electric Circus is to hip hop what Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band was to pop: misunderstood at first, hailed as a work of genius later, forever changing the musical landscape.