If "Ooo, interesting" is the new "Holy fucking shit," we are living in some seriously drab times. And you hear "interesting" everywhere these days. Dull laptops emit interesting glitches and digital farts; interesting aural noodles squirm from tasteful, thirtysomething nu jazz; interesting emo bands sing of interesting gripes; nutso folks in interesting masks make quirky post-rock noise; and interestingly enough, trance suckers have switched to nu-skool breaks (hardcore, for those who missed rave the first time around).

But does any of this music blow your ass off, reinsert the hump in your rump? Does this music bridge the spiritual chasm between a couple of cracked out Endup trannies, you, and god? Can you hum this interesting music in the shower as you revel in postfornication bliss? We seriously doubt it. Clearly, we are entering a battle of behemoth proportions: a war against funk.

Dance music funk believers must rise to the occasion and fight for the right to get funked. And without a doubt, Recloose, a.k.a. Matthew Chicoine, is a soldier of funk. A protégé of Carl Craig, one of the players in Detroit techno's second wave, Recloose delivers huge helpings of warm, kinky, technological soul on his debut full-length, Cardiology. Tempos are comfortable, body-conscious, and varied, ranging from swingy house to atomic, stuttering dub.

There's no category in which to imprison his sound, and that's part of the reason Chicoine is a solid, well-traveled warrior in this war to save the booty. He constructs a skeletal groove using sparse electronics and rich flushes of sinewy, aquatic keyboard sounds. Rhythms are spliced, oddly reconstituted, but always naturally imbibed. "Ghost Stories," a laughing-gas nod to ecstatic rave styles, merges the absurdist humor of funk with chunky, earth-bumping beats and goofy, walloping melodies. "Ain't Changin'" offers a twisted take on what could be a straight up R&B song, with singer Justin Chapman soulfully softening Chicoine's angular beats. Pull out your hand grenades and get ready to rumble: Recloose is here. (Amanda Nowinski)

Townes Van Zandt
A Gentle Evening with Townes Van Zandt (Dualtone)

It's encouraging to know that surprises can still happen. A Gentle Evening with Townes Van Zandt, for instance, a 10-song live CD documenting a concert Van Zandt did way back in 1969. At Carnegie Hall. When he was only 25. What? Who knew this existed? Not even the average Van Zandt aficionado had insider knowledge (not to mention bootlegs) of this performance. Turns out the late, great Texas country-folk troubadour brought his sometimes humorous, frequently devastating songs to the New York concert hall as part of a Poppy Records showcase (his label at the time). After Poppy went out of business, the tapes got passed from vault to vault and forgotten about and were only recently rediscovered.

The album represents a rare glimpse into the early career of one of the late 20th century's most gifted singer-songwriters. Van Zandt, whose voice got much rougher in later years, sounds like a tenderfoot here – the "Gentle Evening" of the title fits. He's alone with an acoustic guitar and a voice that's soft and almost sweet. Though that's not to say the music is merely nice. His biting wit was fully formed on "Talking KKK Blues" (a song never before released on record), and early gems like "Rake" and "Tecumseh Valley" are stark and powerful. He's entirely genuine, whether conjuring feelings of romantic optimism on "Like a Summer Thursday" and the mystical "She Came and She Touched Me," or of soaring, on "Lungs," out into the sky and back down to the dark, bitter ground. It's shimmering stuff, the kind of music that makes you shiver when you hear it. Anyone who wants a little-more-lived-in Van Zandt should seek out the classic 1977 live collection Live at the Old Quarter (just reissued, by the way). But this album is a treasure of quiet, subtle beauty. (Kurt Wolff)

Systemwide
Pure and Applied (BSI)

So many airy clubheads have scrubbed away dub's history as a musical reaction to political violence and social unrest, using it instead for after-hours wallpaper in "downtempo" or "chillout" settings. Where technique replaces grit, the result is never better living. But Portland's Systemwide attack dub like a post-hip hop/post-postpunk version of the Clash, the Specials, or Ruts DC. Like those bands, Systemwide see dub as the foundation not only for a radical sound but also a politics of resistance.

On Pure and Applied, their antiwar polemic "Interference" invites you, Savio-style, to "raise up from the sickness" and "make a joyful noise of interference." "Crisis Time" and "People of the Book" feature Brooklyn's Dr. Israel bringing together strands of insurrectionary history and groove into powerful polemics. Not that it ever gets too didactic on an album where lyrics take a backseat to dance-floor mashing.

Why? Systemwide have the chops to back up the slogans. Plundering dub-influenced styles from Joy Division's Goth to turntablism to U.K. garage, they assemble a bass-drenched world that is always unpredictable. "Champion Sound" feels like Augustus Pablo in a 21st-century black-Brit dance hall. "Ripe Up (Version)" channels a weird wa-wa-ing synth line into a wicked lick somewhere between a Twilight Circus version and the JBs "Blow Your Head" and emerges with the album's best cut. Although the three-song suite "Creationites"-"Snipers"-"Dub Plate" undergoes wild tempo and texture changes, it achieves an eerie unity, which is itself a kind of political statement. Imagine a mixing board emblazoned with the slogan "This machine kills warmongers" and you have the idea. Don't miss them if you can help it. Systemwide play Sun/30, Elbo Room, S.F. (415) 552-7788. (Jeff Chang)

High Contrast
True Colors (Breakbeat Science)

During the past several years jungle has evolved into an intensely minimalist machine with sharp bass lines and percussion virtually unappreciable outside a club environment. But on True Colors, High Contrast invests warmth and feeling into a genre often derided for its coldness and macho austerity. Opening with "Music Is Everything," on which Dionne Morgan passionately declares, "Music is my life," the album features several tracks that highlight the 22-year-old British producer's fondness for keyboard sounds wielded like an orchestra. The result is a vivid emotional landscape more reminiscent of late-'90s "jazz 'n' bass" producers like LTJ Bukem than the new millennium's brutally efficient Decoders.

High Contrast blends True Colors' 12 songs into an hour-long mix tape, subtly emphasizing the differences between each cut's drum patterns and melodies. At one point, he plays two minutes of "Global Love" 's sampled, scatting female vocal before moving into "Savoir Faire" and its plaintive keyboard riff. Each track largely resembles the other, aside from a few subtle variations, so the mix is mostly smooth and unmarked by unexpected shifts.