I know what all you jaded players are thinking: "Naked Music? Ohhh, how 2000!" Fame, especially in the flavor-of-the-minute dance music scene, has its downside, chiefly that if you're happening one day, you will be terminally passé the next. So I kinda feel for Miguel Migs, the San Francisco-based former reggae bass-playing DJ who blew up huge back at the end of 2000. Everywhere you turned, there he was in the glossy mags flaunting that amazingly shiny hair in a piece about how he was the epitome of the "sun-drenched West Coast house sound."

Now he's back, probably after a stint as a hair-health consultant to Clairol, with a mix CD for Naked Music. Migs is certainly the most visible proponent of Naked's "sexy house" aesthetic, aside from the cheesy 12-inch covers featuring bare-breasted nubiles. And he does an admirable job of breathing life into the Naked formula of floaty keys, nimble bass lines, and plenty of congas. In fact, the second track, Onda's "Happiness Is Free," actually starts out with something other than a four-on-the-floor beat. Don't get me wrong – these are nice tracks, well put together and very clean sounding. And there are bits of ersatz jazz joy, like the scat-guitar combo in "Love Yourself" from Blue Six, that are outstanding. But, as an evil professor was fond of writing at the end of my less-than-inspired papers, "So what?!" The few moments that rise above the rest, like the funky syncopation of Batidos's "Tengo Sed" as remixed by Ron Trent, are all too quickly sucked into the mediocrity of cuts like "Spiritual" from Reel People, with its cloying "da-da-da" vocals and schmaltzy flute.

Curiously, one of the mix's most effective songs is one of the simplest: Kerri Chandler's "Atmospheric Beats" shows how the same elements present on many other cuts can be put together for a truly rump-shaking sound. But, for all its attempts at sexiness, Nude Tempo One mainly falls short of delivering the goods, though as a casual flirtation it does the trick. Good sex is dirty, or at least very messy, and these beats are way too clean. (Peter Nicholson)

Arcturus
The Sham Mirrors (Jester)

It's not that I like pain, but the albums that have the biggest impact on me tend to cause some kind of discomfort. The bogus Charlie Parker "best of" tape I got in ninth grade is the first album that really got under my skin like that; La Masquerade Infernale, the 1997 album from Norway's Arcturus, is another. It was among the most excessive music I'd ever heard – it made my stomach queasy. "Satanic intellectuals playing electronically altered opera-rock?" I asked myself (probably not in those well-tailored words, but that was the idea, anyway). "Keyboard-drenched cabaret music played by a band of black metalers? Are these guys serious?"

This confusion soon evolved into near-obsession. I got their other albums, including the surreal 1999 "remix" CD Disguised Masters, an odd piece of work that has jungle, ambient, string quartet, and (seriously) gangsta rap versions of some of their older songs. Not only didn't it suck, but it was also the last proof I needed that I should stop viewing this group as exotic sideshow freaks.

What fascinates me about Arcturus is how they get away – often just barely – with so many things that should sound pompous, pretentious, or just plain wrong. The Sham Mirrors, their official follow-up to La Masquerade, shows this ability again and again, like when they sandwich a distorted trip-hop breakdown into the middle of the otherwise soaring metal epic that is "Nightmare Heaven." But they aren't just getting away with this stuff, they're doing it in style – their style, which is to make it all as grandiose and dramatic as possible. (Will York)

Edan
Primitive Plus (Solid)

When you first listen to Edan, you swear you've stepped into a time warp that has sent you back to the era of velour warm-ups and Adidas shell-toes. His rapid-fire lyrics, set over an old-school beat barrage, sound straight off a lost demo from '88. But Edan, a 23-year-old white rapper from Boston, by way of Baltimore, was barely a toddler when Rakim and Big Daddy Kane ruled the brownstone stoops. An A+ student of hip-hop, Edan's mastered the lesson plans of Ced Gee and Percee P, reviving the art of "fast rap" braggadocio that ran New York's streets from the mid to late 1980s.

But Edan is no old-school preservationist, although it's true he can invoke that aesthetic at will, literally mimicking Kool Keith and Schooly D on "Ultra '88" and "Schooly D" respectively. But he's also synthesizing elements from hip-hop's golden era with a knowing wink. On one of his best songs, "Syllable Practice," he warns, "I'm not going to say anything significant, but, it's going to be battle rhymes, and it's going to sound pretty," and then, true to promise, he hits you with this: "The renegade radical / Demonstrates battle drill / Efficiency and dedication / Through placement."

As the album's producer, Edan lovingly resurrects the ol' boom bap style you thought went out with flat tops, juicing up songs like "One Man Arsenal" and "Rapperfication" with sparse, thunderous drum tracks. But he also throws in a surprise or two, tweaking a classical piano melody in a funky little riff on "Key-Bored" and dropping a slick jazz loop on "Run That Shit." The convergence of Edan's old- and new-school styles makes for one of the most entertaining albums in ages, as he nods to the past while running full-force into the future. (Oliver Wang)

Comet Gain
Réalistes (Kill Rock Stars)

"What's your favorite Hitchcock?" David Feck asks on Réalistes, Comet Gain's fourth near-masterpiece of mod, politico-rock, and cinematic obsession. "Strangers on a Train is mine, but Rachel [Evans, co-vocalist] thinks that Rope has its moments." Not unlike Le Tigre on their misogynist-versus-genius debate, "What's Yr Take on Cassavetes?," he's using an iconic film director as a springboard for dialogue about the intersection of politics and pleasure. It's typical Feck fare too: wearing his heart on his movie stubs, he's looked to his fave flicks to frame his song narratives of relationships and worlds gone wrong ever since forming the band nearly a decade ago.

It's unsurprising, then, that Réalistes once again finds the London-based band exploring love and life through the lenses of the film world. It's more implicit this time, however, with fewer outright lyrical references to Shirley MacLaine, Kenneth Anger, and Pier Angeli than on previous albums. Instead, Feck and co. inform their music with artwork that's littered with untitled movie stills and manifestos that treat movies as political revolutions. And sure, this music-as-movie-as-resistance metaphor is occasionally pretentious, but it's the willingness to take that risk – or, more important, the unwillingness not to take it – that keeps Comet Gain so refreshingly earnest and honest.