Dorian Concept's When Planets Explode is a sumo wrestler with smiley faces tattoed on his ample buttocks

Dorian Concept's album When Planets Explode is a sumo wrestler with smiley faces tattoed on his ample buttocks. He's here for serious business, but he's not afraid to be playful either.

Let me explain.

Oliver Johnson is an Austrian producer with a microKORG under one arm and John Coltrane records under the other. As Dorian Concept, he slapped us across the chops with a couple of neat singles recently, including the head-noddery The Fucking Formula as chronicled on these pages here.

Concept's absorption with detail steals your breath. This is only his debut album, but he sounds like a master. Not hanging around on any one loop for too long, he dives straight into the morphing experimentalism that made Autechre's name.

Johnson must spend decades in the studio. Every week. Literally.

The formula doesn't always work. Mesh Beam Splitter has more noodling than an eating contest in a Wagamama, and after a while it's tiresome and your beard smells of peanut sauce.  Meanwhile, Her Marshmallow Secret sounds like Prefuse 73 waiting for a bus.

However, when the playfulness kicks in, it's a different record.  Clap Beep Boom nicks its cue from The Fucking Formula, where the beats are so crisp, they should have a Walkers logo. Color Sexist's bassline has more fuzz than Fozzie the bear watching Hot Fuzz whilst listening to Fuzzbox on a de-tuned radio.

The playfulness makes up for the seriousness. Whether you like it jazzy like 4hero or super-sawing like Dabrye - or you just have some bass bins that need testing - When Planets Explode is worth wrestling with.

A Satirikul Cartoon By Fat Roland: this website's equivalent of 'hold music'

I am in my bed of sick at the moment.  Blogging will resume as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, please make do with this satirical cartoon about the bitch-slapping between YouTube and the Performing Rights Society (PRS) (above).  This took seconds of really hard work, which is why it works on hundreds of different levels.  Do they give Oscars out for really great cartoons, I wonder?

Meanwhile, have some Vimeo videos of blokes twiddling knobs in the dark. They vary in quality, but each make me leap for joy inside my plague-ridden hovel. The third one is, as some of my younger contemporaries would say, "sick".


Dorian Concept, Miss Libertine's, Melbourne, 1/2/09 from frogstar on Vimeo.


The Crystal Method in Action from Corina Writer on Vimeo.


kult.live : scanner live at kvitnu fest from The Kult! TV on Vimeo.

Farting, belching, bleeping buckets of steaming sub-bass

Murcof (pictured) just seems to get deeper and deeper, into some unknown depths that would even prompt Satan to exclaim: "Hey, what's going on down there?"

The Versailles Sessions, Murcof's new collection of experimental noodlings on the legendary Leaf label, are no less deep. Although the album was meant to work for an arty-farty event on the other side of the channel (in a land called France), the sprawling, spooky compositions work in their own right.

The only downside is the record's loaded with harpsichords and flutes, and is therefore giving me flashbacks to my third year music lessons at Parrs Wood High School.

My favourite album this week is the seething bucket of steaming sub-bass that is Lord for £39, the latest offering from Edinburgh's Neil Landstrumm.

The rolling tech-bass tickles the feet of ragga and plays footsie with bleepy console noises to produce what ought to be a sombre bad-boy wonky techno effort. Except, the album has titles like Ross Kemp As Pixel and Easter Krunk Power, so it's hard not to smile.

Finally, keep your eyes open for a 12" from Dorian Concept called The Fucking Formula. It snaffles Landstrumm's fuzzy bass and wonkiness, but it has a Prefuse 73 accessibility about it. If you like your belches and squelches as low end as possible, whilst keeping your top end nodding in a hip hop stylee, track down this single - and duck when album When Planets Explode hits next month.