The Definitive Jux crew are close, so close now – and this despite grassroots beginnings and a work schedule that could kill them. Soon Murs, El-P, and the guys will be chilling with Big Boi and Missy like it's no big thing.

For the time being though, we can take Murs's Murs 3:16 – The 9th Edition as an underground swan song, intentionally clumsy in all the right places and just right to blow up the place. Murs's debut last year, The End of the Beginning, was at times unfocused and only squeaked through on its clean finish. 3:16, however, from start to end, finds the Los Angeles-based MC bringing it all together – tight delivery, explosive gift of gab, slick production – into one succinct package.

After an exhaustive 2003 tour schedule, Murs shipped out to Durham, N.C., and hooked up with up-and-coming producer extraordinaire 9th Wonder (a.k.a. Little Brother), a studio cat known for the glossy beats that adorn Jay-Z's Black Album. Wonder's '70s-soul samples so perfectly suit Murs's tales of a street-walkin' man in pimp and dope-fiend territory that without checking, one might mistake 3:16 for a Gang Starr or Slick Rick record.

Murs has picked his collaborators and mentors wisely, and despite his stylistic claims that he's a sitcom rapper – you know, his songs are about nothing – these tracks are about something. "Trevor an' Them" recounts the worst-planned liquor store heist ever, in plain detail. "I was standing by the magazines / Reading a Maxim," he reels off in the establishing shot.

And even when Murs rides off the rails into hypersexed Kool Keith land ("Freak These Tales" and "Bad Man"), he's hilarious and deftly precise; in fact, he's even a little gross at times, but it's somehow refreshing for the slightly uptight backpacker genre. (Take it for what it's worth, but Murs claims to only keep guns, weed, and demo tapes in his rucksack.)

Suffice it to say, little Murs is Murs's gift and curse, as he blindly follows his phallus into and out of bad situations. Hindsight is, of course, clearer than heinie-sight, and after the damage is done, Murs tends to recount his tales in the crisp manner of the genre's master yarn reelers. If he could just keep that damn thing in his pants, though, he'd realize his mind might get him further still. Murs plays with the Perceptionists and SA Smash Wed/14, Slim's, S.F. (415) 255-0333. (Ken Taylor)

Amps for Christ
The People at Large (5 Rue Christine)

Christ is back. Big time. And I don't mean simply The Passion of the Bloody Christ or Good Friday or even Easter. I mean the idea of resurrection, in the high-flying, big-promises style of Schwarzenegger, The Swan, and I Want a Famous Face.

So where does that leave Amps for Christ? Was it simply a coincidink that The People at Large, their seventh full-length and a leap from smaller indie Shrimper to bigger indie 5 Rue Christine, came out – and went forth to serve – only a little more than a week before Mel Gibson's smash gorefest? Flog that old phrase once more: what would Jesus, the marketing savant, do? Wouldn't a Passion-Amps corresponding release create just the kind of marketplace synergy Christ would engineer? Give Amps' chosen one a flat-top acoustic guitar, homemade instruments, and a waveform or two, and you can guarantee indie rock heaven, if not worldwide box-office success.

I knew some higher power had to be responsible for the latest disc by Amps for Christ, Henry Barnes's one-man band and spin-off from Man Is the Bastard and Two Ambiguous Figures. As I slipped it into the boom box, it revealed a weird and somewhat familiar, questioning, ever questing mix of delicate and almost pretty buzzsaw distortion ("Been to the Rock"), meditative sitar ("Claremont Raga"), and tenderly delivered lo-fi folk about pastoral matters like violets, primroses, and peace, which melded much of the aforementioned noise with acoustic fingerpicking ("The Morlough Shore"). Gorgeous reveries such as "Flower and Leaves" could win over Cat Stevens – that is, before he found, er, you know, God. "Memmorial Immemorial (Revisited)" splices Ten Years After and Jimi with clearly audible chopper blades, sending memories of 'Nam through a murky, intergenerational looking glass. It's enough to make you a believer. The added bonus: there's no side order of anti-Semitism alongside Barnes's passion. (Kimberly Chun)

Craig Taborn
Junk Magic (Thirsty Ear)

Craig Taborn is a relatively young jazz keyboardist who has already played with several big-name bandleaders, including James Carter and the Art Ensemble of Chicago's Roscoe Mitchell. I got into him through listening to him play with saxophonist Tim Berne's phenomenal recent trio and quartet. That's not easy music to play, but Taborn handles it as well as any keyboardist could, navigating Berne's hairpin, tongue-twister melodies, adding spaced-out ambient synth effects and dealing out speaker-rattling left-handed bass lines that sound funky despite being in impossible-to-decipher time signatures. He also plays the Fender Rhodes without sounding like a '70s fusion reject, which is no small feat. Berne's Science Friction (Screwgun), The Shell Game, and the recent two-CD live set The Sublime And (the last two on Thirsty Ear) are amazing albums – not just for Taborn's contributions – and you should listen to at least one of them before proceeding to Junk Magic if you're unfamiliar with Taborn.

This CD is good too, though. Unlike Taborn's previous solo disc, Light Made Lighter, an acoustic piano-trio album, Junk Magic centers on his electronic keyboard playing, which is his strong point. Taborn is joined by violinist Mat Maneri, saxophonist Aaron Stewart, and drummer Dave King of current media darlings the Bad Plus. Together they find a middle ground between avant-garde jazz and modern-day electronica that has eluded many participants in this label's Blue Series, most egregiously, faux-highbrow artiste DJ Spooky on his star-studded Optometry CD, but also the often-great Matthew Shipp.