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Lush melodies build from classical samples and synthesizers, gentle guitars and pedal steel, simple percussion and electronic blips and bleeps.

Hanno Leichtmann records his solo material under the name Static, always collaborating with guest musicians. Re: Talking About Memories is his third full-length album for the City Centre Offices label based in his hometown of Berlin.

About half the songs have vocals, which sound best on “The Moon Had a Crack.” The singing on the rest of the album is harder for me to get in to. I agree with Textura that it would have been nice to hear a female vocalist over some of the dreamy soundscapes. Or maybe just a more accessible male singer.

As electronica with pop sensibilities, the music works. Despite the digital effects, the well-crafted songs reflect the human involvement. All Music Guide said the album “stretches beyond the boundaries of IDM and gives it a much needed electric shock to its hardening arteries.”

Just don’t expect it to wake you up.

Leichtmann has been involved in many other projects, from free-jazz bands to a contemporary dance company.

Sometimes music speaks louder than words. So go ahead and preview the entire new Tristeza album via the band’s e-card, or grab an mp3 of the lead single, “Bromas.”

If you’re looking for a little background information and some subjectivity, read on.

The review

As the sticker on the outside of the plastic-wrapped CD cover notes, A Colores is “a colorful journey beyond instrumental post-rock, delving into the darker realms of modern psychedelia.”

Bassist Luis Hermosillo said to expect the band to add vocals in the future. He also explained the new direction:

We wanted to make the music more focused within its notes, grooves, timing, spacing, layering, etc. We want to dial into the whole aspect of composing—and most of all, we wanted it to be honest.

A Colores marks Tristeza’s first album sans-LaValle, and everything has fallen perfectly into place. I saw The Album Leaf this past spring, and the whole show was mesmerizing. Both groups have developed beautifully, and neither seems to be slowing down.

Currently on the road, Tristeza wraps up its fall tour in support of the new album on December 3 in Tijuana, Mexico, where much of A Colores was written. That same month, Jimmy LaValle will be recording the follow-up album to The Album Leaf’s In a Safe Place.

The British duo known as Coldcut haven’t released a proper album since 1997’s Let Us Play. This month they unveiled Everything is Under Control, a CD single and a preview of what’s to come on Sound Mirrors, set for a January 2006 release date.

The song features Jon Spencer of Blues Explosion and emcee Mike Ladd, whose conspiracy-theory diatribes set the political tone for the track. The original version is an electronica-based hybrid of rock guitars, left-field hip-hop vocals and big drumbeats with cowbell.

The CD also includes five remixes with varying tempos, instrumentation and arrangements. There’s a downtempo version stripped of the guitars; others were sped up to heart-stopping speeds. I recommend the original, though a few of the remixes are worth listening to.

Listen to all the tracks for yourself, or check out the video, also included on the enhanced CD — probably not worth buying. Wait for the full-length.

Keeping busy

These pioneers of sample-based electronic music began working together in the mid-’80s and have been making noise ever since. In 1988, they hosted the Solid Steel radio show together, which then ran on Kiss FM in London and is now available online and syndicated worldwide. In 1991, they founded the prolific Ninja Tune record label.

Taking their cut-and-paste compositions beyond music, Black is also one of the directors of NOW!, an intriguing and collaborative film project.

The duo also had a hand in Revolution:USA, a multimedia political art project allowing visitors to assemble and contribute their own audiovisual commentary on the States’ political climate.

An updated version of the real-time video manipulation software that Coldcut helped create in 1997 will be released early next year. A demo version of VJamm3 will come with Sound Mirrors.

These songs resonate with the kind of vulnerability of a boy trying to find himself, equipped with just a guitar, some like-minded friends and pages torn from a weathered diary. Only this boy has grown up — or at least gotten older. But his voice still cracks, and he stills sings with the kind of honesty that would make most adults blush.

Singer-songwriter Ben Barnett, 30, has been writing songs and searching for himself since he was a teenager, playing his first show in a metal band at 14. He has long since shifted his focus to folksy, do-it-yourself indie rock.

In the Red, his eighth full-length album, explores a range of emotions and instrumentation. Some songs are just Barnett and his acoustic guitar. Others find him playing the electric guitar backed by a full band. The pace is always changing, and the whole affair is hardly consistent.

Perhaps the label describes it best:

This is an artist that can both invigorate an audience with rare energy then turn around and demand rapturous silence and reflection. This is an artist taking a look in the mirror, wrestling with demons, and after a knock-down drag-out brawl, finding some peace.

This, of course, is not for everyone. Many will cringe at the description alone. It’s nothing exceptional, really, and I think he has done better. But I have a feeling that he’s doing this for himself.

For an introduction to the artist, I’d recommend Nothing Makes Sense Without It (mp3s: “Blue Period,” “Birds of a Feather“), One Hundred Dollar Room (”26 Is Too Soon“) or Old Moon in the Arms of the New (”Boy Cries Wolf“). Or you can just listen to Barnett’s cover of GZA’s “Labels.” Bet you didn’t see that coming. It’s gettin’ drastic.

Maybe one day “O.C.” will be widely associated with more than a popular Fox television show, and Omar Credle can finally get the attention he deserves.

I doubt that this will be the record that does it. Veteran rapper O.C.’s fourth proper album fell short of my expectations.

When I saw that it was being released on the Hieroglyphics label, my hopes blossomed. The Brooklyn-born emcee finally found a worthy label, run by a like-minded collective.

But this is not the O.C. album I’ve been waiting for. Another post-Jewelz disappointment. It remains far from essential.

Smoke & Mirrors suffers from trivial production, handled almost exclusively by Mike Lowe. The generic beats are a collection of nondescript loops built from uninteresting synthesizers and cliché soul samples. Okayplayer calls it great. If the album was produced by someone else, I might be singing its praises. No luck.

The lyrical content ranges from defensive braggadocio to introspective confessions as O.C. proves that while he may be in his mid-30s, his timeless flow remains intact.

Maybe the next O.C. release will be the one that pulls everything together for one of the most slept-on emcees of the past 10 years. Hopefully then he can step out of the shadows of his ´94 classic track “Time’s Up” and prove that his clock hasn’t stopped.

These two deejays dissect and reassemble sounds from old Polish jazz records with the precision of surgeons. The carefully-crafted, downtempo Skalpel songs fit in perfectly with the aesthetic of the Ninja Tune collective.

While many eastern European bands try to emulate Western styles, Skalpel’s Marcin Cichy and Igor Pudlo work instead within the framework of their native country and its history to produce a more unique sound.

It’s the sort of thing you’d expect to hear in a smoke-filled, dimly-lit club. It’s the sound of a bygone era reinterpreted through the ears of two audiophiles — an era when musicians held on to artistic freedom despite communist pressures.

In an interview with Pixelsurgeon, Cichy said that they did not start out to be ambassadors for Polish music and culture, but they could sense that it was happening. “We didn’t plan to be, but now we know that we are,” Pudlo added.

One thing mentioned in the album’s press release holds true for the best in sample-based music:

…this is a record brimming with ideas, with atmosphere, with the kind of intelligent cut and paste that makes it an artform instead of a form of theft.

With Vheissu, the members of Thrice refuse to pigeonhole themselves, constrained to the limitations and expectations of a certain sub-genre.

They may not be quite at the level of shape-shifters like Radiohead or Cave In, but Thrice is leagues ahead of most of its Warped Tour contemporaries.

The overall sound has become often atmospheric and experimental. A more melodic direction was hinted at on 2003’s The Artist in the Ambulance, but the expansive, cinematic nature of Vheissu remains unprecedented.

Moody keyboards and ambient electronics lend to a spaced-out, dramatic mood. One song builds from a haunting Japanese music-box melody. Singer-guitarist Dustin Kensrue explains the band’s intentions:

Our biggest goal was to make something different, even if we didn’t know at first exactly what that meant. We just knew we wanted it to be atmospheric and create a space you could kind of live in. Our records have been kind of flat and two dimensional in the past, so we definitely wanted to try to do something more open sounding.

Fans of breakthrough album The Illusion of Safety may be disappointed. Teppei Teranishi’s piercing guitar solos are noticeably absent. The screaming is sparse, and the tempo is often slower. But Thrice has not sold out — just progressed. Call it a reinvention.

A contest that ends in January provides fans with the tracks to lead single “Image of the Invisible” and gives them the chance to reinterpret it. The band also made the entire album available for listening on MySpace.

Thrice donates a percentage of the album’s proceeds to 826 Valencia and is currently on tour with Underoath, The Bled and Veda.

According to Isaac Asimov’s Zeroth Law of Robotics, “A robot may not injure humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.”

In the same vein, Jacksonville’s Asamov refuses to sit back and witness manufactured, inept artists harm real hip-hop. Determined to uphold the culture’s roots and redirect its future, these four emcees deliver an organic, soulful debut album.

“I feel like [nowadays] the bar is lowered in hip-hop for lyrics and originality,” J One-Da said in a recent interview. “Back in the days, you had to be dope on the mic to even speak.”

Each member of Asamov could easily put out a solid solo album, but the group’s chemistry reveals a truly cohesive collective. They all lend their talents to both the vocals and the production, feeding off of each other’s ideas without any one person stealing the spotlight.

The group’s aesthetic and production channels the Native Tongues Posse, recalling the golden era of hip-hop. The feel-good album has a more laid-back vibe than the high-energy live show, yet Asamov thrives in both settings.

Starting Nov. 5, Asamov will be supporting The Perceptionists on a two-week tour from Annondale, N.Y., to Jacksonville, Fla.

A couple months ago Kanye West pulled off collaborations with both Jay-Z and then-nemesis Nas on Late Registration.

In an interview with MTV’s Sway, West admitted to putting Nas on the track behind Jay’s back.

“Good music can break through anything and maybe start to break down the wall between two of the greatest MCs that we have,” he said.

MTV News detailed the event, noting that “this is what Tupac and Biggie never had a chance to do.”

The fans in East Rutherford roared like the spectators at the Roman Coliseum after a gladiator finished off an opponent. Although both Jay and Nas maintained their composure and avoided cheese smiles, you could tell that under the b-boy cool, they too were taken aback.