CONTROL VOLTAGE

May 18, 2012 – Thirty-two years ago today, I sat on the roof of our house and watched a plume of ash rise 80,000 feet in the air above Mount St.

May 17, 2012 – Seventeen years ago, Squarepusher (Tom Jenkinson) began his career as a breakbeat gadfly, chopping up jungle with Jaco Pastorius into a style known briefly as "drill 'n' bass" (or, better still, "weirdy-beardy").

May 14, 2012 – Exercises, a new mini-album by the Montreal musician CFCF (Mike Silver) for Toronto's Paper Bag Records, is a masterpiece of restraint.

May 11, 2012 – Sorry, futurists: This week's selection of records is all about looking back, whether it's Rush Hour unearthing an overlooked gem of New York house, from 1990, or Clone delivering the second installment of its Drexciya anthology.

May 9, 2012 – Legowelt, a.k.a., Danny Wolfers, is a prolific sort. Slogging away in his studio in the Hague, surrounded by some of the finest (and sometimes buggiest) analog music-making implements known to humankind, he can bang out old-school synth-and-drum jams with the ease of the late Christopher Hitchens reeling off a 1,500-word diatribe about Henry Kissinger, somewhere in between the third and fourth glass of wine.

May 8, 2012 – Once upon a time, dubstep was made by nerds — dudes obsessed with dubplates, bass bins, and other hallmarks of soundboy culture. Now, however, the genre is being used to sell Nerds — that is, the colorful sugar-crystal candy made by Nestlé's Willy Wonka brand. A new commercial for the pebbly confection takes aim at the ADHD set with a theme song set to dubstep's signature LFO wobble and whooshing synths, drops and all.