Track Listing: Glide, Art.Love.Music, Going Nowhere, Greeve, Boat Beat, Last Song, Epic Electric, Del Frompson, Voyage of the Blue Robot, Three Minute Miracle.

Chicago-based Bounte certainly has mad DJ skills and a seemingly effortless mastery of all the tricks of his trade – sampling, layering, sequencing, and all that fun stuff. To my subjective ears, though, his debut CD One ultimately consists of varying degrees of background music.

The CD begins with a pleasant pop sigh infused with jazzy improvisations and, atypically for the mostly instrumental album, vocals. Then it moves on to a mix of tracks that feel variously mellow to something one could almost dance to. There’s enough complexity and sophistication for One to be genuinely interesting, drawing smoothly from genres like house, jazz, pop, and electronica. But artistically generic substance, exemplified by bland titles like “Art.Love.Music.”, and a propensity for lounge-like meandering make it easy for distractions to wrest attention away from the music. What’s good for the club, alas, isn’t always good for the home CD player.

For more information, visit Bounte’s website.

Track Listing: One, Two, Three, Four, Five.

Sam Rosenthal’s beautifully hypnotic side project is a quite different beast than his Black Tape for a Blue Girl. Synthetic loops and special effects come together to form flourishing ambient drone soundscapes inspired by and evoking – as the name suggests – 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s like the sound that might come out of a conch plugged into an amplifier. Or maybe it’s what space would sound like if sound traveled through vacuum. Regardless, there’s a delicious paradox: is desolation still desolate when expressed through beautiful sounds?

Whether or not a “core of loneliness” has tendrils that wrap Earth’s inhabitants in “despair and uncertainty,” as the liner notes put it, is debatable. There’s a definite sense of solitude, but it’s always possible to indulge the joys of interpretation and find something other than mesmerizing coldness – perhaps something meditative. After all, even the mysterious monolith seen by Bowman was “full of stars.”

To lose yourself in the depths of space, visit Projekt records.

Track Listing: Veer, The Tree, Song of the Dane.

Setting aside the issues of production quality that come from DIY recordings, there’s one thing that can be said unequivocally; it’s metal, all right. This self-titled EP from a Sydney-based band in search of a record label has the aggressive guitars, mythology-based lyrics, and usual elements that make up the genre, albeit with a bit of neo-folk thrown in for variety. I’m not sure that either the melodramatic warbling or the more customary metal vocals have the tonal muscle to be anything other than serviceable to the music, but the musicianship is fine and the band’s earnestness works in their favor.

It may very well be that, given a sound and thematic focus that doesn’t quite stand out, Ironwood’s appeal is confined to hardcore devotees of pagan-inspired metal. Maybe, when a record label somewhere gives them a chance, we’ll see what they’re really capable of.

For more information, check their website and MySpace page.

Track Listing: Calling Me, O Cessate, Ivory Bed, Heart’s Song, Shule Aroon, Angel Eyes, Almost, Shaking of the Sheets, Secret Things, Paris Rain, Rapture.

The first song sounds like a lovely attempt to channel Loreena McKennitt, but the following tracks reveal there’s more to Regan than mimicry. With a conventionally pleasing voice that fares best when brightly operatic, Regan shows a particular knack for concatenating a variety of influences into her songs, particularly Celtic and jazz. The occasionally surprising result: an album that often invokes a sultry night in a dimly lit cabaret. Surprising, yes, but decidedly mixed.

Songs like “Ivory Bed” (on this day I said to myself/ the time has come to play/ she beckons me I said to myself/ she beckons every day) veer into seriously overwrought territory, while others, like “Heart’s Song” (we are one, my love, with the stars), expose dangerously maudlin tendencies. The shiniest spots include her snazzy adaptations of Scarlatti’s “O Cessate di Piagarmi” and the Irish folk song “Shule Aroon”.

Pleasant album overall, but...

Your edification awaits at Regan’s website.

Track Listing: Blood Lush, Taste of Euphoria, At Dawn They Sleep, Tolerate, Sleeping (In the Fire), Night of the Long Knives, Public Service Announcement, Science Fiction, I Cast You Out, 49 Snakes.

Let’s not quibble about whether it’s better to adopt the neologism “gothtronica” for Anders Manga or simply lump him without too much ceremony into Industrial/EBM, with an emphasis on the EBM. Personally, I lean towards the latter. Still, thumping music by any other name thumps just as well, despite rare misfires like the grating downtempo 80s-style melodrama of “Sleeping (In the Fire)”. Anders’ vocals leave me alternatively interested and indifferent, but that’s fine; the music is king, with beloved influences – Clan of Xymox, NIN, Apoptygma Berzerk, and others – casting a mostly unobtrusive shadow on the music’s heavy electronica core. Better yet, there’s a bit of humor on the album, as proven by the helpful public service announcement stating “marijuana is the bomb.”

At the least, Anders Manga gives Assemblage 23 a run for the money. Discover more at the official site.

Track Listing: Defenestration, No Man Alive, Don’t Be Scared, Carnival Justice (The Gloves Are Off) Part II, You Don’t Leave a Trace, Where the Wounds Are, You Had Me, Beware the Touch, Girls That Glitter Love the Dark, Status, The Apple, Carousel, Never Look Back.

I’ve not had the pleasure of hearing Hannah Fury’s work before, but now that I have all I can say is that discovering Hannah is like discovering Melissa Kaplan or Jill Tracy: it’s a revelation. Her lush, full-bodied voice carries expertly crafted and enchanting songs like a cathedral carries rich and resonant echoes or a carnival carries a sense of wonder and a bit of danger.

My only criticism is that there really isn’t anything to criticize; I might as well just end this edition of In Rotation, pack my bags, and go home. Through the Gash has a startling and unconventional lyrical quality, with such lovely turns of phrases as “girls that glitter love the dark”, and a willingness to experiment that doesn’t come laced with navel-gazing. Can’t ask for more than that.

Enlightenment is here.