February 19, 2013 – Who: Hailing from Wakefield, England, Bobby Krlic is the Haxan Cloak, a producer of dark ambient music as blackened and viscous as a scorched crème brulee. He takes his alias from the 1922 silent film Häxan, a hallucinatory exploration of witchcraft and psychosis, and his death-rattle strings and amorphous drones (with titles like "Raven's Lament" and "Burning Torches of Despair") leave little doubt as to his sepulchral inclinations. "Ever since I was a child, I've always warmed to the darker-natured things in life," Krlic admits. "My brother is eight years older than me, and when I was a kid, he'd bring home Napalm Death records, but also Snoop Dogg and Ice Cube, and a lot of the imagery and lyrical content in those records is very dark.

February 19, 2013 – Be careful what you wish for, keepers of the old-school flame.Diplo, A-Trak, and Skrillex's new YouTube channel, POTATO, launched yesterday, but instead of anything you might have been expecting from its debut episode — a roundup of twerking public servants, say, or animated tubers doing Baauer's "Harlem Shake," or a roundtable discussion on the three DJs' preferred frequent-flyer programs — viewers were treated to a history lesson about the roots of techno. Or maybe it was a travelogue on Detroit? Actually, what the hell was that?In an eight-minute clip that feels twice as long, we first learn, via Professor Skrillex, that "Detroit is the birthplace of electronic music, electronic dance music, whatever you want to call it, techno, whatever.

February 13, 2013 – On the new Netflix original series House of Cards, whenever the hotshot blogger character Zoe mentions a fictional Politico-like website called Slugline, the first thing that always pops into my mind is a conga line dancing to the music of London's Night Slugs label. It's nothing like that, of course; I doubt we'll be hearing any electronic music from the inside-the-Beltway political drama, unless, I don't know, maybe Zoe and Frank hit the U Street Music Hall for a Moombahton Massive party after a particularly intense redistricting session.But the fact that I can't hear the word "slug" without thinking of Night Slugs suggests the impact that the label has made in just three short years. Under the guidance of co-founders Bok Bok and L-Vis 1990, the label-cum-collective has developed one of the most distinctive sounds in U.K.

February 12, 2013 – Going by the preview, you might describe the elevator pitch for Park Chan-wook's new film, Stoker, as "Lolita meets The Talented Mr. Ripley." (Fangoria calls it "an Alfred Hitchcock film as captured through the lens of Terrence Malick.") Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland) plays India, a loner with a musical streak and a simmering, sublimated violence. After her father dies in a car crash — on her 18th birthday, mind — her uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode), previously unknown to her, arrives on the scene to care for poor India and her nutso mother, Evelyn (Nicole Kidman). Sexual tension and a rising body count ensue.

February 11, 2013 – I never thought I'd say this, but, as far as electronic dance music is concerned, last night's Grammys were actually the best possible scenario. (Okay, that's a lie. The best possible scenario would have been a full-scale military invasion by Liechtenstein, with stormtrooper ninjas shimmying down ropes in the Staples Center while Al Walser shot lasers from his fingertips, chanting, "I am the mouse that roared!")But within the realm of actual possibility, it really couldn't have gone any better. Skrillex won everything. Everything! His "Bangarang" won Best Dance Recording. His Bangarang won Best Dance/Electronica Album (even though I'm pretty sure it's technically an EP, but who cares?).

February 11, 2013 – If you've got a pair of 3D glasses lying around the house somewhere, left over from Avatar or The Hobbit or Top Gun or whatever, put 'em on now. Australia's PVT have pulled out all the stops for their new video for the single "Vertigo" — a claustrophobic but motion-filled clip that's been shot in glorious, stereoscopic red-and-blue. Oh, and if you've got a spare Dramamine lying around, now would be a good time to fish it out of your duffel bag as well. The video might begin calmly enough — indeed, you may at first find yourself wondering why they bothered shooting in 3D at all, given the five-foot depth of field and egregious lack of projectile effects — but the genius of their take on the trope is the way it sneaks up on you.

February 8, 2013 – Autechre's latest album, Exai, unexpectedly appeared for sale on Bleep and iTunes today, nearly a month before its previously announced release date; call it the m b v effect, maximizing listeners' attention by catching them off guard. I'm exaggerating — I doubt that Booth and Brown actually decided to unleash their new LP early because of anything that Kevin Shields did. (For one thing, it's only been three years since the last Autechre album, so there's really no competition there; if you average m b v's running time over the long span since Loveless, it took My Bloody Valentine that long to come up with just six minutes' worth of their new opus. Autechre can write whole new synthesis platforms in the time it takes My Bloody Valentine to change chords.)But m b v's impromptu online release party had me thinking of Autechre anyway.

February 7, 2013 – As club culture migrates online, thanks to DJ mixes posted to SoundCloud and real-time streaming venues like Boiler Room, technology has enabled clubbers unprecedented access to information about the music being played. Gone are the days when DJs could keep their music secret by spinning white labels (or even covering their records' center stickers with fake labels, as dancehall's competitive selectors once did).

February 6, 2013 – "Stupid is spreading."That was Pasquale Rotella's response to a recent Los Angeles Times article detailing 12 drug-related deaths of attendees, many of them previously unreported, at electronic-dance-music festivals and concerts produced by his company Insomniac Events between 2006 and 2012. Two more deaths were linked to events produced by Reza Gerami's Go Ventures, the other Los Angeles promoter who came under the Times reporters' scrutiny.The Times' investigation was based on coroner reports from jurisdictions in several states where the two promoters held a combined 64 events since 2006.

February 6, 2013 – The nu-disco dream-weaver Sorcerer is back with his first release in over three years, and he sounds as spellbinding as ever. Sorcerer is the solo alias of San Francisco's Dan Judd, a member of the sun-kissed duo Windsurf (with Hatchback, a.k.a. Sam Grawe) and the equally atmospheric space-disco group Shock (with Michael Taras and Rubies' Teri Lowenthal, Judd's former bandmate in Call and Response). Last we heard from Sorcerer, he was taking the whole "desert island discs" concept literally: 2010's Neon Leon (Tirk) sounded like the work of a guy left marooned with a stack of Jan Hammer, Alan Parsons Project, and Giorgio Moroder records (or, alternately, Tom Hanks drawing smiley faces on a disco ball).On his new EP for Diskotopia's A Kind of Presence sub-label, Judd sticks with the Balearic message-in-a-bottle theme.