****
Dizzee Rascal, AKA 18-year-old "grhyme" garage MC Dylan Mills, landed the shortlist for Britain's Mercury Prize last week--presumably on the massive strength of his Positive K-style, war-of-the-sexes single "I Luv U" (a bouncy, coy number whose popularity germinated on London pirate radio. Chingy aside, it's as close to a perfect, hot summer jam as we'll get in America this year). The rest of Dizzee's debut record, Boy in Da Corner, which was released in the UK last week, doesn't quite approach the preternaturally electric charm of "I Luv U." Even so, Dizzee's raps are charged and his production, tight--a layer of minimal drum tracks that seem to spring and coil and spark into their own visceral melodies. Part of the Roll Deep Crew, Dizzee is a better and more substantial ambassador for UK garage than Mike Skinner (The Streets) ever was. Rascal's timbre possesses none of Skinner's isolated wistfulness; instead, he's propelled by the unfettered drive/corked frustration that can only motivate a dude this fresh and angry and eager to prove himself but fronting otherwise. Dizzee's kinetic cadence and the spark of his consonant-y East London twang are compelling enough, but his lyrics and life experience cut deep--often pinpointing, if not outright addressing, class inequity in urban England. On "2 Far," he wonders, "Queen 'lizabeth don't know me so/How can she control me when I live street and she live neat?" With its striking production and raw outlook, Boy in Da Corner is the best non-hiphop hiphop record this year, and if/when it catches on in the States, it'll revolutionize on Missy/Timba proportions. JULIANNE SHEPHERD

POLE

Pole

(Mute)

***
Pole is Stefan Betke, a Berlin-based producer who got his start with the legendary techno collective Basic Channel. In the early '90s, Basic Channel--which currently goes under the name of Rhythm & Sound--released a series of 12-inches that blended Jamaican dub with Detroit techno to produce something that was thoroughly German--dreamy, beautiful, and machinelike, the music lacked any kind of human emotion or natural warmth, instead giving off the sort of heat you'd feel on the shell of a computer or hood of an automobile.

Betke was the cutting engineer for a number of Basic Channel's recordings, and during the late '90s began a series of CDs simply titled 1, 2, and so on, which contained minimal dubscapes that, like Basic Channel's techno, were inhumanly warmed by electric sprays and washes of hiss. Betke's latest CD, Pole, is a combination of two earlier EPs, 45/45 and 90/90 (both released in 2003), with the addition of a rapper, Fat Jon, who is based in Ohio. His raps are dense and philosophical (as on "Slow Motion," which is a long reflection on the nature of time), often lacking that easy and addictive swing. But then again, Pole's dub is not made for easy listening; as with Fat Jon's lyrics, its place is not in the hips but in the higher parts of the mind. CHARLES MUDEDE

RACHEL'S

Systems/Layers

(Quarterstick)

***1/2
Somewhere between chamber pop, modern classical, and experimentalism lies the distinctive sound of Rachel's. Like the loosely structured breakdown of This Mortal Coil's 1984 debut, It'll End in Tears, Rachel's Systems/Layers swans through the inclinations of a somber mood, each of its 19 tracks expressing tender vagaries of the soul. Produced by the band and Bob Weston, the album incorporates a full chamber orchestra along with film loops and well-placed vocal contributions ("Last Things Last" features lyrics sung by Shannon Wright), keeping in the tradition of past Rachel's works that integrated writers, choreographers, and visual artists along with a changing lineup of auxiliary musicians. For Systems/Layers, Rachel's asked friends and fans to record sounds from their environment or everyday lives that represent personal meaning, and these submitted snippets figure richly in the elegance of the multilayered compositions. KATHLEEN WILSON

THE MAD DADDY

Wavy Gravy!

(Norton Records)

****
During the late '50s and early '60s, mild-mannered Pete Myers, AKA the Mad Daddy, created the most way-out radio personality ever. From 1958-'63, the Mad Daddy wailed on Ohio's WHK, where, while juggling eight turntables, he blurted out a mile-a-minute mélange of beatnik banter, horror-show googly-moogly, and jarring sound effects, all intro-ing only the sleaziest R&B of the time. He also created his own wacky vocabulary, constantly rhyming real and imagined words throughout an entire four-hour broadcast, even during the ads where he had to hawk stuff--with everything drowned in reverb.

A supposed "big break" at a NYC station quickly turned into a suit-forced tone-down, and the Mad Daddy flipped his wig for real via shotgun in 1968. Thank Satan that Norton has tracked down original tapes of some of these broadcasts, though, and compiled this incredible document. It mostly contains the wild one's verbal histrionics, with a few crazy tunes in between, a bizarre single he cut in 1959, plus boss liner notes and pics.

It's hard to imagine in today's corporate clench a local DJ being allowed to laugh and scream over flubbed-up adverts. Hell, it's hard to imagine local DJs. But more than a reminder of how lame radio has become, Wavy Gravy! works sonically as an almost hypnotizing mantra, is perfect for spicing up mix CDs, and will be utter gold for fans of mid-20th-century America's weirdo hidden history. ERIC DAVIDSON

**** emo *** screamo ** Beano * chemo