The Latest: Blacklist by Kap Bambino

Great music can come from anywhere. You know this already. The weird band from off the beaten path is always gonna be far more interesting than scenester-clones. So, I guess it stands to reason that France is going to cough up a good band eventually. C'est vrai, oui?

And believe it or not, there are actually deux bandes* worth talking about these days. Kap Bambino is straight outta Paris with some crazy electro-punk, and as you might expect, it doesn't make much sense, even though it's mostly in English. ("I want to see dead lazers in the night. I don't care about the distance." Well, alright then!)

Who cares, though, when the sound is this powerful? It's definitely cybernetic. Lots of synths and beats, although they are pretty messed up, so don't expect a clean, robotic synth-pop thing. The keyboards are overdriven and glitchy, the drum machines are jacked up, and the songs shift structure. Dead Lazers, for example, goes from a goth-y anthem into a stadium techno bridge, 11:58 is a pulsing throb that has frequent breakdowns, and Red Sign feels like indie-pop dressed up in buzzsaw synths..

It's all a bit reminiscent of the Robots In Disguise (the electro girls from the Mighty Boosh) but it's also a bit like a much more aggressive Berlin or New Traditionalists-era Devo in places. Aggressive is the key word here. You probably want petite doses at first, since it can definitely wear you out, but it is loud fun, too.

*Le bande deuxieme de Paris is called This Is Pop which is more like a Francophone riot-grrl indie sound. They are incredibly low-profile online, so I can't share anything here apart from my respect and admiration.

The Latest: Bird-Brains by Tune-Yards

Some girls' journals are, as one might expect in the classic "Dear Diary" style, fairly calm and romantically aspirational. Others, though, are wildly fantastical and unhinged, not just chronicling the frustrations of life but inventing a "me-centric" universe in which to retreat.

I'm pitching that theory in order to try to explain what's going on with the Tune-Yards album, but hey, your guess is as good as mine. Quite frankly, Bird-Brains is 100% bonkers.

Take News, for example. This is a relatively straight-forward song with a traditional song structure and hummable chorus. And it happens to be performed on ukelele and ping-pong paddles. Oh, and there's a glassware solo.

It's not quite as impressive these days when one person cooks up an entire album of music, but the inventiveness of Bird-Brains still blows me away. Honestly, even though the sonics of the two records are worlds apart, I keep thinking about Remain In Light when I listen to Tune-Yards. Think about it, though. Tricky rhythms, chanting and call & response vocals, big bumpin' bass lines, and a gleeful round of noise making to augment the songs. (Sunlight is a great example of the weird sinuous funk.) They said Byrne and Eno were nuts, too.

But there's definitely something brilliant in that madness. My guess is that the only person who even halfway understands it is Merrill Garbus... she who is Tune-Yards. (By the way, I'm not doing the official spelling of tUnE-yArDs. It hurts my brain more than the record does.)

And if you like this, you should definitely check out Micachu and the Shapes. Golden Phone is another home-brewed party jam.

The Latest: Ambivalence Avenue by Bibio

Quite literally the last thing I picked up at a mad-dash shopping rampage at Rough Trade East last fall, Bibio's Ambivalence Avenue has quickly turned into one of my favorite new records.

As I started thinking about how to describe this warped, weird masterpiece, almost every statement I could muster was possibly misleading and even more importantly, incomplete. It's not folk (although there are lovely pastoral moods and 12-string guitars throughout.) It's not electronica (unless you are a stickler for the label when samples and drum machines are about.) It's not folktronica (because that doesn't realize exist!) And that's just ruminations on the first track. By the time you get to the amazing single Jealous of Roses, Bibio has dipped into the funk to craft some 21st century dusty soul. Phew... five minutes in and it sounds like the kitchen sink has been thrown in. But the most important thing to note about Ambivalence Avenue is that it is not a clunky "some of everything" laptop jam: it's a fully realized set of songs with a full palette of sonic embellishment.

The closest cousin is Caribou's Andorra, which ran 60's psych-pop through a electronic filter to spectacular effect. (Melody Day, one of my Songs of The Decade, still stuns even after a few years.) But there's also hints of Beck and Bran Van 3000's joyful blending of styles (minus the larger-than-life personalities) and the Avalanches' ability to knit disparate sounds into a cohesive whole.

A dance mix with ambient interludes? A song-based techno compilation? Maybe one of the things I love about Bibio is that it's so undefinable. That's the kind of record I can listen to over and over.

Start with: Jealous Of Roses and try the title track for a calm meditation and crank it up with the 4AD-meets-big-beat Fire Ant.