After my long absence, one punctuated by miserable colds among the whole clan including my daughter, I find myself buried under new releases–some fifteen or so to date. So what better way to get started than diving into the latest release from one of my favorite groups.

I’ve been enamored with Up, Bustle & Out since the first time a clerk over at Other Music in NYC slipped their sublime Rebel Radio: Master Sessions, Vol. 1 across the counter for me to try. The blend of Breakbeat and Cuban music was and still is intoxicating and the respect that they approached the traditional forms was refreshing. Mexican Sessions Our Simple Sensational Sound sees them head to Monterrey, Mexico to whip up another cross-culture creation this time blending together Dancehall, Dub, Rap, and Cumbia into a languid but heated mix which is the perfect herald for warmer days.

The album lopes along in no particular rush, providing a backdrop that is slightly exotic and often trance inducing. “Mundo Insolito” is one such track with its Cumbia shuffle that makes your body just ache to slide about dancing like you’ve had five or six mojitos too many. Seamlessly that track staggers into “Cumbion Mountain” which will have you waving your arms in the air like an uncaring fool and will have you spinning around all the way to the sublime Flamenco breakdown, “Guitar Ahoy” at the album’s close.

You can get a little taste by sampling the album over at their website but really you should just go out and buy it. Mexican Sessions Our Simple Sensational Sound is just that good and makes it on to the skeletal beginnings of my Best of 2007 list. Very highly recommended.

Opening with shivering strings, An Announcement to Answer imparts a tangible organic feel that wraps itself about the listener in warm, textured folds but it is over all too quickly, unwinding just shy of the forty minute mark. On this, his third release, Will Holland, finds himself digging deeply into the Cuban Soul and Funk diaspora from the 60’s and 70’s, layering them thickly alongside elements from Japan and Africa to create an album that is at once sunny and exotic but tinged with a sense of moodiness. It is an intoxicating journey from start to finish, one that left me a little breathless and looking to repeat it immediately.

this is an album for muggy August nights, strolling underneath pale streetlights casting an orange glow as a stray dog skirts about just on the edge of darkness. “Sabor”, with its swollen horn arrangements, nimble guitar work, and loping vocals builds a fantasy of summer streets late at night with people lounging indolently against dirty brick walls or stretched out on the steps of a building breathing in the scent of the city slowly. Closing out the album is the delicately sweet “”Tell It Like You Mean It” with a saxophone arrangement that strikes closely to the feel and flavor of Rova’s “Suite For A Better World” if it were dropped in the middle of a Brazilian Carnival with undulating bass lines and lightly skipping percussion.

This is what good music does, it is transportive, carrying the listener out of the mundane and to something more vibrant and nuanced.  Not many do this as well as Holland, under his Quantic moniker. An Announcement to Answer is sultry listen, one that is warm to the touch, confident and breathless at the same moment. For all its quickly evaporating thirty-eight minutes captured my mind and heart easily putting it on my Best of 2006 list. To get a feel, you can sample the album over at his website.

Classics, if you’re anything like me, is the perfect bridge between that pair of acid washed 501s with the tear in the left knee and the fact that Colette’s Hypnotized is still in weekly rotation. It is a decadent romp filled with crisp drum production and thick, heavily processed guitars that oddly evoke fond memories of all those long summer days grinding through “More Than A Feeling” because the guitarist truly believed Boston was the pinnacle of rock music. On their sophomore effort Ratatat joins the mathematical precision of beat making and juggling with all those fleeting moments in rock that might make you pause and think, “Hey, maybe guitarists aren’t so bad after all…”

This is an album about guitars or more accurately about hyper-distorted, freakishly compressed layers of tones that occasionally approximate six strings and a fretboard but more often than not have more in common with a synthesizers and racks of tone generators. This is not to say that Stroud is on the same page as DragonForce’s Li and Totman, rather his playing is definitely more understated, eschewing flashy technique and focusing on balance and interplay between melodies and sounds. “Montanita” shows him layering delicate tones that glisten with just enough tremolo to give a sheen of exotica yet the song still manages to retain grounded in the rock roots from which Stroud emerged.

Giving structure to all of it is the work of Mast, the brains and production behind the pop friendly beats that dominate the album. From the infectious dancehall inspired back beat of “Gettysburg” to the restrained Beatlesque psychedelia of “Tropicana” his work on the album demonstrates that it is far deeper than just a collection of hooks and bridges. It is his ear for composition and arranging that help this album span the world of bedroom beats and arena rock posturing; if you have any doubts check out the free stream over at Myspace of “Wildcat” with its campy cat growl and early 80’s bare-bones Disco rhythm section.

Slap “Lex” on your next mix to give it that much needed strutting cock-rock flavor and by all means grab the whole album if you have the chance even if it means the rock purists in your circle will wrinkle their noses at the hyperbolic guitar production and post-ironic harpsichord lick. Classics makes it onto my Best of 2006 list for the simple fact that it makes me like guitarists again, if only for a little over 40 minutes.