The Rubber Room column is a weekly look at recent and notable releases that don’t fall into the rubric of traditional reviews or reviewed material—namely 7”’s, 12”’s, 3” CDs, EPs, cassette-only, DVDs and MP3-only releases.

Miss Kittin
Mixing Me EP
[Astralwerks, 2005]

It takes a few songs to get moving, but on the second half of this EP, Miss Kittin gives a clinic in DJing, with each track sliding unnoticeably into the next, even as the sound shifts. The Michael Mayer remix of "Happy Violentine" starts the flow, which peaks with a banging version of the same song re-done by LFO. We're also given two versions of the want-to-hate-it-but-can't "Requiem for a Hit," including a stellar GE-GM mix. Most of the songs here are techno-ed up versions of I Com numbers, so it's been an easy job for Miss Kittin, even if she has become "allergic to" herself.
[Justin Cober-Lake]

Fennesz Sakamoto
Sala Santa Cecilia
[Touch, 2005]

This piece, the first collaboration between onetime wunderkind Christian Fennesz and Japanese legend Ryuichi Sakamoto (an album is coming soon), touched more musical bases in 19 minutes than some artists touch in whole careers. It careens from near-classical ambient studded with popped bubble processing to moments of skittering glitch beats to the epic noise washes Fennesz made his name with. Sakamoto and Fenessz have condensed their names into a single supername, and the gesture is appropriate. One can’t distinguish the contributions of the two laptop wielders. While distinctly Fenneszian in sound, Sala Santa Cecilia lacks his trademark guitar, emphasizes rhythm more heavily, and sports some of the playfulness of Yellow Magic Orchestra (witness the swirling parlor room unleashed at the eight-minute mark). Such playfulness comes in regrettably small bursts, but the rest of the recordings sounds suitably majestic, so I’ll forgive and forget. If the album fares as well as this EP, the experimental music community will collectively wet themselves.
[Bryan Berge]

Hard-Fi
Cash Machine EP
[Necessary, 2005]

You can learn enough from the sea-crossing group's cover of "Seven Nation Army"—the band's funkier than the White Stripes, but not as aggressive as that duo at their finest. The harmonica-toned part adds a nice element to the song, but why bother trying to catch up with such a hot, recent single. Ignore the diska dub-hop stuff that's being written; I won't deny the presence of disco and dub influences, but they're heavily filtered through the Franz Ferdinand template, which is ... well, you know about them. But "Cash Machine" is catchy and interesting enough that it might sustain the hype for a few months anyhow.
[Justin Cober-Lake]

Davenport
Springtime on Saturnalia
[Pseudo Arcana, 2005]

Springtime on Saturnalia, one of a slew of recent offerings from the Madison, WI-based commune jammers Davenport, begins with a recording of someone stomping though the woods. An airplane passes overhead—Davenport is taking the lonely forest walker for a trip, and when the sitar hits, you know the pun is intended. The music certainly sounds springtime enough: timid guitars and rustling percussion recall the first reluctant stumbles into the sun after a restful winter. This eighteen-minute work bursts with serenity. If you’re curious about the modern psychedelic underground, but you’re turned off by the saucer-pupilled, foam-flecked mouth side of the scene, this is the Davenport release for you. And it’s still in print to boot.
[Bryan Berge]

It’s Jo and Danny
Entangled (“God’s Closed his Eyes” single b-side)
[Double Snazzy, 2005]

This is shaping up to be an excellent Summer, helped along by some superb and strange releases which keep clipping the edges of my radar. The a-side is a fiddley-de-diddley folk with some life / god /environment lyrical obviousness whose tune is too average to lift it out of the doldrums. But blow me if the b-side isn’t a slice of Summertime Alien to earth communication couched in a cutesy acoustic guitar pattern. Its constant and slightly wavering high pitch whine is more Morse code from E.T. than G-Funk and it brings a sense of oddness to the song that’s not quite folktronica but definitely really quite prettily pastoral without being Aaron jumper-ish or BoC.
[Scott McKeating]

King Creosote
So Forlorn (…again) (Favourite Girl EP)
[Names Records, 2005]

Backed by label mates The Earlies, his royal highness the King of Creosote releases a pre LP EP and wraps it up with a piece a little too active to be really forlorn. “So Forlorn (…again) is a beautiful and perfectly placed ending which flows along on a steady Organ and acoustic guitar and is pebbled with a sharp repetitive melody. Bringing to mind Adem’s sonically undernourished but emotionally hearty folk this is another sneaky little campfire-cider-sweetheart on your arm anthem. Like Chuck D once said the b-side wins again.
[Scott McKeating]