Being a two-time Grammy nominee must come with a lot of pressure and expectations, each album and song being further scrutinized and dissected. But Carmen Rizzo seemingly shakes all of that pressure off time and time again. His resume includes co-writing on Oakenfold’s “Bunka” and Seal’s “Seal 2” with remixes of Tiesto, BT, and collaborating with Jem and Esthero. Career-wise he has also worked with such luminaries and music industry faves as KD Lang, Pete Townshend, Morissette, and Coldplay. On “Looking Through Leaves” he populates his songs with minimal dark electronics forging a surreal soundscape that is dauntingly vast. Joining Rizzo are guest vocalists Shana Halligen (ex-Bittersweet), Kate Havnevik, Grant Lee Phillips, Rosey and January Thompson. Together it’s a gorgeously flexible exploration of the next direction of electronic music and scoring. Oh and by the way, he’s set to donate an exclusive remix of his “Bring the Mountain Down” that features Grant Lee Phillips to the David Lynch Foundation.

Remixes of KMFDM’s latest album released in 2009, “Blitz”; “Krieg” is a body-crushing dance nightmare with some of scene’s bravest and best innovators tapped to revision the music into something distinct and even more intriguing than the original track. The album opens with a bang with Combichrist’s “All 4 One Mix” of “Bait & Switch”, sounding like a rave held at an abandoned east European factory.  Then “Strut” is rerubbed by Andy Selway whose “Disco Balls” mix is dirty and reminds one of Lords of Acid. Seismologist offers up a darkened “Potz Blitz!” that bleeds old school industrial dance. Prong grabs their distortion pedals and pounds on your eardrums with their rendition of “Bait & Switch”. Skinny Puppy contributor and engineer Dave “Rave” Ogilvie brokers his take on “Never Say Never” with a mix that’s surprisingly very Yo Gabba Gabba with its sun-soaked synths and pleasant melodies. Other notable contributors are Komor Kommando, Assemblage 23, tweaker, Koichi Fukuda, and Vile Evils (Pop Will Eat Itself).

True dub that is actually good is a rare gem these days. So much dub is littered with has-been electronica or reggae “artists” that couldn’t scrub a sink let alone sink their teeth into wobbly bass or sparse techno bits. Teleseen is one of those special groups that combines the raw techno rhythms with that sweat-soaked club bass with a Zen-like nod to reggae, dancehall, and two step. There are elements of hip-hop and ragga that are firmly stirred together for a raunchy rumble of bass-driven sparseness with a cute wink at Afro-beat for good measure. Intriguing reminder of a less-involved PlateaU album.

The joy of listening to an album by Download is deciphering and breaking down each element to the complex sound collage that makes up each and every track. “Sorcear” is a perfect example, trolling about with an almost raunchy bassline and rhythm track, there’s exhausting bleeps, noises, and distorted sounds emanating from the speakers in a random yet controlled chaotic setting. “Zass Pie” continues with yawning voice samples that seem to whisper subversive hints into each ear only to be stood up tall with a military-esque kick drum and blasts of filtered rhythms. Over the years, cEvin Key (Skinny Puppy, pLateaU, Doubting Thomas, etc.) has honed his craft into an ambient textured orchestrated chaos with fittings of pure keyboard bliss, distorted and tangled sound effects, and mangled samples that reek of bong residue. Key over the years has easily been recognized as one of the most influential artists in the electronic circuit surpassing the likes of Autechre, Nine Inch Nails, and even the mighty Aphex Twin who now seem to follow his grace with rabid fascination. Twisted acidic breakbeats haunt many of the tracks with a renewed focus on dance rhythms that are broken, tossed into the air, only to rain down upon our ears. Each album that Download seems to pen casts aside previous futuristic sounds for a chaotic future of disco breaks that no one ever sees coming. Perhaps the most intriguing element of “FiXeR” is its uncanny ability to connect with the listener on so many different planes of existence–I could easily sit still and absorb each tune, as well as get up and attempt to dance, or leave it as background music while reading; but it really gets its vibe off proper when the listener allows each cast-off melody, every broken beat, and all singularly textured and heavily effected soundwave wash over him or her seeming to will a mirror of the listener’s soul and thought patterns out in a playful way. Astonishing and perhaps one of the best all-time electronic albums.