Realizing that Dethlab has two absurdly high profile events in New York coming up fast, I've been on a bit of new music buying blitz today. (We've been too occupied with making teh art the past couple months to keep on top of new releases. Bad Dethlab! Spank.)

Firstly, I finally got around to downloading Ghostly's two hottest new releases of the month: Christopher Willt's highly acclaimed Surf Boundaries and Sami Koivikko's Paajaasa [there are many many many umlauts in there, but Blogger does not deal well with umlauts.] I was going to try and write a review here about Chris' record, but I honestly need to spend more time with it first. This is the kind of LP that deserves several focused listens. Bissonnette and I did preview it the other day, and were pretty floored with how far Willits has fleshed out his work. It's a creeper, and I think it's the rare kind of record that will unfold and become more and more satisfying with every listen. I can confidently say that Sami Koivikko's new EP is the frackin' bomb. I liked his work on on T. Raumschmiere's Shitkatapult label, but Koivikko has clearly matured toward music that can be best described as porn soundtracks for steam-powered robots. Minimal compositions work best with a maximal palette of sounds, and Koivikko has nailed it here.

I also downloaded a handful of spankin' new singles, including Extrawelt's Titelheld (FSK 18), Extrawelt's remix of Alexander Kowalski's Start Chasing, Kiko's remix of Kowalski's House of Hell, and the brand new MOTOR single 1x1 featuring Nitzer Ebb's Douglas McCarthy on vocals.

Just released this week is Agoria's second LP The Green Armchair on Different Recordings. I've only gotten through it once, and it walks (maybe not always successfully) the fine line between brilliant and cheesy. I for one will always choose cheesy over boring. Guest vocalists ranging from Peter Murphy to Neneh Cherry might imply a high cheese factor, but it comes off well - reminiscent of Death in Vegas at times - and Murphy delivers some of his best vocal work in years. Agoria once again proves that the French do not care about what is happening in New York, Berlin, or Detroit, and will always kick our asses on the dancefloor.