CONTROL VOLTAGE

May 7, 2012 – Welcome to a new, occasional series in which I'll be shining a spotlight on club classics that were released 20 years ago. My first pick is one of my favorite discoveries of recent years, and surely one of the strangest collaborations in the history of house music.

May 7, 2012 – Last fall, when Ghostly International's Sam Valenti IV and Miguel Senquiz were in Berlin, we met up for beers and a little shop talk. They wanted to pick my brain, they said, about a new music platform they were developing.

May 4, 2012 – If there's a theme this week, it's outsiders, whether that means contemporary artists working at the fringes of the club scene or forgotten musicians from the 1970s. Probably not coincidentally, all five records are also slow burners. Albums, artist anthologies, and compilations alike, they require a bit of your time. They also reward active listening, but really come into their own when they sink in from a room away.

May 3, 2012 – For 12 years, the MUTEK festival has drawn increasing numbers of fans to Montreal at the end of May for five days and nights of some of the most forward-thinking electronic music programming in North America.

April 30, 2012 – The first time I heard Lana Del Rey, I immediately thought of Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game" — or, to be precise, Herb Ritts' sultry black-and-white video for the song, with Isaak and Helena Christensen frolicking in the surf, clad only in their Calvins. I imagined that if their tryst in the dunes had produced a baby, it would have been Lana Del Rey. (Alas, Lizzy Grant was born three years too early.

April 25, 2012 – I had expected Graham Zilla to be gruffer, more taciturn, more intimidating — more in keeping, in other words, with the vibe of αlpha, his new EP (as Nautiluss) for Montreal's Turbo Recordings. It's stern stuff, after all, especially the A-side, with its bruising bass lines and muddied sonics, stumbling like a boxer who's beginning to tire and all the madder for it.